


Feral

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood Drinking, Gen, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-09 09:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam was kidnapped by Azazel and left in the care of demons when he was 6 months old. Not knowing Azazel's plans for Sam, they dump him in solitary confinement, keeping him from developing any sort of bonds and communication with the outside world for 22 years. It's not until Dean and John Winchester rescue him from the demon's warehouse that Sam has the chance to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic for my friend Emily, I hope you like it. :)
> 
> Mild Dean/Sam, because of the situation Sam is in there will be nothing too...you know.

He can’t remember anything outside of the four concrete walls. He has memorized the details, it’s the only thing his brain knows. The vent is rusted, leaks water that he drinks by sucking the water from the concrete floor, and it has precisely 10 slots on the vent cover. Not that he counted them, its just something he knows, just without the word for it.

They make sounds sometimes, but They never seem to hear his sounds, so he stopped making them a long time ago. He’s never seem Them, They always seem to come during the night when he’s sleeping on the ground, and its never often. He drinks the water from the vents. And he eats the bugs and rats that somehow make their way into his four concrete walls.

But sometimes, They bring him a gift. It’s a small bowl, with squiggly lines and colorful shapes on it, not that it matters. What matters is inside the bowl. A red, warm liquid that always make the sweating, the aching stomach pains, and fidgeting go away. He always dips his fingers into the bowl and licks his fingers clean to make sure he gets every last drop of the stuff.

He’s not sure what he is. Or what they are. Or what this place is. It simply just is. This life is all he knows. If he’s content, angry, happy, he wouldn’t know, he wouldn’t have anything to compare it to.

It’s a quiet life, laying on the filthy concrete, littered with feces and urine and dead bugs and just things but he’s beyond knowing what a clean life is. The young man stares up at the ceiling and watches a spider spin its web. It’s too high to reach the spider and eat it, but it’s a big one, and he stares at it with hunger in his darkened eyes.

The spider spins its web for a few hours as he patiently watches it, trying to figure out how to get to it.

Just the concrete walls and the vent.

He picks up a dead bug carcass and throws it at the ceiling, hitting the web but it simply sticks there and doesn’t move. He grunts and picks up one of the dried feces and throws it next. It knocks half of the spider web off and the spider loses its balance, the still-intact web vibrating.

The young man doesn’t cheer or relish in the almost succeeding moment, his eyes simply narrow and he picks up another one, throwing it to loosen the other side.

It works. The web falls apart, some of the stickiness clinging to the ceiling and walls, but the spider falls back first onto the ground. It’s legs curl up and the young man runs towards it immediately, catching it between his filthy hands.

There’s a booming echo beyond the door, the loud sound much like thunder, the instinct hits him and he takes the spider between his palms and he scoots towards the corner of the room, away from the loud sound.

The spider is still alive, he can feel it scratching at his calloused palms, probably biting too, but he doesn’t register the pain, it’s food. His palms open towards his mouth and the man practically swallows the entire spider in one go. There’s a juicy pop and the movement stops, he then swallows and his attention finally goes towards the loud sound.

They are yelling. They never yell. It’s so much noise and more loud booming echoes. It never seems to end, the echoing. He’s not sure what it is, but the noise is too much, he covers his ears with his hands, blocking out the sound. There’s no need to cover his eyes though, if the Thing comes, he’ll be prepared and he will attack it. 

The echoing seems to stop, and the young man takes his hands off his ears, and just continues to sit in the filthy corner. After all, that’s what he’s always done, and he looks around for anything else to eat.

There’s a slide of rusted metal on metal, and the man quickly turns to face the sound. But there’s light leaking into his cell, he forces them shut, the light too bright on his blown pupils.

“Oh my god,” there’s a voice. But its not a voice that he recognizes, so he folds into himself in the corner, protecting his body from the danger. If he can’t see to attack the Thing, then he’ll just have to resort to defense. “Dean, get over here now,” the voice continues.

It means nothing to him though, just sounds that have no relevance in his life.

“What?” There’s a silence and the echo of footsteps, and as the footsteps come closer, the voice is closer too, “holy shit, what the hell stinks? The demons have a garage compactor in here or something?” Dean briefly looks at the room before turning around and pinching his nose, “holy shit, you think there’s a dianoga in that?”

John doesn’t laugh back at the reference, and starts into the room. Dean notices his father moving into the filth and turns to watch him, “seriously? What’s in there that you’re risking smelling like-“

His voice trails off when Dean sees him, the naked boy curled up in the corner of the room. It’s not even a room and it wasn’t even a prison cell, Dean thought, taking notice of the complete lack of a bed, or a toilet, anything that would give a human basic needs. “Dad, what the hell is this?”

The older man is silent, looking down at the young boy hunched over in the corner, “I don’t know, Dean…fuck if I know what the hell demons are doing with this kid,” John bends down to the young man’s level, “hello?”

He doesn’t respond to the sound, it’s not a sound directed towards him, they never are. 

John persists, “what’s your name?” He puts his shirt over his mouth and nose, the smell way to strong, and he asks again, “what’s your name?”

Dean watches from outside the door, no way is he getting shit and bugs in his boots, but he can’t stop watching the kid. He looks about thirteen years old, but there’s no way to completely tell. The face is hidden by matted hair and most of the skin is either ribs or covered in filth.

His father moves closer and closer to the young man in the corner, asking him quietly over and over basic questions about himself, but nothing seems to register. There’s a half-grunt and half-growl noise coming from the young man as John nears. Dean steps forward into the room when he sees the silver blade in his father’s hand, “dad, what the hell are you doing?”  
“Stay back Dean, that’s an order.”

He stays back, but he questions him again, “you’re just gonna stab some kid?”

John pauses but keeps an eye on the hunched over figure in the corner, “we don’t know if it’s a kid. I’m just being cautious Dean.”

Dean stays back and watches John press a hand on the boy’s shoulder. It’s quick, in a blink of an eye, the boy is wrestling with his father on the ground. Or, more accurately, John is wrestling with the boy on the floor. The boy snarls and bites and growls and claws at Dean’s father but there’s no technique. Nothing human or calculated to it, only pure animal instinct driving the boy to attack in any way his brain can.

It takes Dean to step in and wrestle the boy into a pair of cuffs and a chokehold that knocks him out unconscious after several seconds. The two Winchesters stare down at the naked young man below them, Dean’s eyes soften and he looks over him now with his face unhidden. With the filth all over his face, it’s hard to tell, but the boy looks around fourteen years old, “what the hell are demons doing with this kid?”

“Possibly a kid,” John replies and bends down, cutting a small slice into the boy’s arm but nothing happens, “you have any more holy water on you?”

Dean takes out his water himself and bends down, John stepping away. The father watches as Dean pours the holy water right over the cut in the boy’s skin, and then he grabs a flask and pours alcohol over it next. “We need to call the cops for this kid, dad. Probably has family out there,” he says, ripping part of his shirt off and wrapping it around the cleaned cut.

His father is silent for too long, and Dean looks up to take a read of his facial expression, “I can’t do that Dean…”

“What? Why not?” Dean stands up, taller than his father by a couple inches now, “you saw it yourself. Not a shapeshifter, not a demon, he’s just some kid abused by demons and probably wants to go home.”

“Exactly, Dean. Abused by demons.” Dean stares back at his father, not comprehending what he means, “why the hell would demons keep around this kid for…years Dean, if he’s just another human?” Dean starts to protest but his father keeps talking, “it’s an order Dean. We’re taking him with us, and until we figure out what the demons wanted with him, he’s not going anywhere. Now pick him up and let’s get outta here before anymore come back.”

It isn’t pleasant walking back towards the car with an unconscious stinking weight in his arms, and Dean swears he could see lice and cockroach eggs and maggots in the kid’s hair in the low light of the night moon. He wants to throw up, really, wants to at least put his shirt back over his nose and mouth but it slipped off less than 10 steps out of the warehouse.

His father is carrying all the supplies and guns, and unlocks the Impala for him to slip the boy into the backseat, “don’t we have like a blanket in the trunk?” Dean asks. Half concerned for the warmth of the boy who has probably hasn’t felt night air in a couple of years and half concerned for his baby’s upholstery. “You know…cause it’s cold, dad.”  
John nods, grabs a blanket from the trunk and starts to help wrap the boy up into car. He’s boney, Dean examines, beyond emancipated, and while he secretly likes it when men in front of him are naked, the filthy and boney shape of the boy laying down on the backseat of the Impala is nothing short of disgusting.

Dean closes the backseat door closed and opens the passenger side, sliding into the car next to his father, “so what’s your plan? I’m Baloo to his Mowgli now or something?”

“Yes, you have a problem with that Dean? You get him back to health and you get him to talk about who had him captive and why. This is our best leads to that demonic son of a bitch that killed Mary, and he gets a nice warm bed and food. It’s a win/win situation, Dean, so buck up or get the hell out of my car. Got it?”

The son nods, emotions hidden away beneath a blank soldier stare, “got it.”

The Impala roars to life, taking the three back down the interstate. The boy is out cold longer than a chokehold usually lasts for, they both take notice of this but don’t continue to drive for to long.

John pulls into the parking lot of a hotel, and looks sharply at Dean, “I’ll get us a room. Keep your eyes on him.”

“Yes sir,” Dean responds, and keeps his eyes on the young boy for several minutes. His father comes back, climbing into the driver’s seat of the Impala and driving it back around to the rear of the hotel.

When John stops the car and hands Dean the hotel key, he explains, “get him in there as quickly as you can and clean him up. There’s no cameras on the floors, just the lobby, but be careful. We don’t need cops on our ass here.”

“Alright,” Dean responds, climbing out of the car and collecting his things. He then wiggles the kid out of the backseat, “you ready?” Dean asks his father, who is still sitting in the driver’s side, the car still rumbling on.

“I have to chase some leads Dean, make sure he’s cleaned up by the time I get back,” he demands, backing the car out of the hotel parking lot before Dean can say anything else.

Luckily, his father wasn’t a complete asshole, and did get him a room on the first floor and at least parked right next to it.

It was a wrestle, getting the door open with the key with an unconscious weight in his arms and the weight of his backpacks and duffles on his back, but he manages it open and stumbles his way in to drop the boy softly on the ground.

He takes off his backpacks and places the key on the table. After turning on the lights and examines the boy fully now, under the soft glow of artificial light. What skin he can see under the human excrement is pale, as if it has never seen a lick of sunlight. The hair is a dark matted black, greasy and full of lice and god knows what else. The fingernails are yellowed and cracked and curled up under themselves, never being clipped within his life time.  
Putting his shirt back around his mouth and nose, he picks the boy back up with the blanket, not wanting to touch the crustiness of the filthy body. Hunter or not, he draws the line at touching a human who looked like he swam in a fucking Porto Potty.

He runs the water, like the good obedient soldier he is, and all the bars of soap into the hot water. Dean then unwraps the boy and maneuvers the unconscientious weight into the tub. The water browns immediately, becoming a dark black as he gently starts scrubbing the skin with a small washcloth.

“This is fucking disgusting,” he hisses, “you hear me?” He angrily unclogs the tub, watching the filthy water go down the drain. Bits of bugs and dirt and things Dean would rather not think about lines the tub wall.

Dean starts the shower running, the constant drizzle of water working better to get the filth off the boy, and the remnants of the failed bath follow down the drain as well.

Needing shampoo and conditioner, Dean turns around to grab the mini hospital sized ones. When he turns back, the boy’s eyes are wide open, and he’s currently huddled in the corner of the tub with his yellowed and missing teeth bared as if he was a dog. Under the stream of the water, Dean can hear the young man grunting and growling, and he slowly raises up the shampoo and conditioner to show him, “looks, it’s just shampoo dude.”

His words don’t seem to register since the young man just continues to stare at him, cold and blank eyes, bloodshot red from the stress of the artificial lights.

His dad’s words echo through his mind, and needing to get the boy cleaned up for his father, Dean comes towards the boy, playfully showing off the shampoo body, and he smiles at him, “see? Just shampoo. You remember shampoo? Bet you miss that man, cause you smell like ass.”

Still nothing registers, and as Dean nears, the growling gets louder. Dean squirts a large amount of shampoo on the boy’s hair and the boy hisses and groans, flailing around and attacking the lump of goo on his head. The water spray hits him directly, and the boy screeches and panics, scratching and clawing at the porcelain tub, trying to get out. 

Dean backs away and watches the kid’s wide eyes and scared face try to get out from under the shower spray, as if his life depended on getting out of there. The shower was some sort of monster and to this kid, a tub was an impossibly steep cliff. Quickly, Dean shut off the water and just stayed there, standing and watching at this kid slowly relaxed. 

The kid flops backwards into the tub, his chest moving quickly up and down, his body shaking and cold. Slowly, Dean grabs one of the clean, white hotel towels and places it around the boy. 

He doesn’t take notice of Dean, staying wide eyed and scared and unmoving even with the towel placed around him, “you okay?” Dean asks, he doesn’t expect an answer. “You want to get up and out of the tub? You can’t sleep in the tub.”

But that’s exactly what the boy seems to believe, he grabs the towel and sniffs it and touches it briefly before looking up at the harsh source of light. The young man squints and quietly hisses, placing the towel up to his eyes and lays back down, resting.

Dean follows the line of sight of him, seeing how the boy stared briefly at the fluorescent lights and then covered his eyes with the towel, and he quickly got the message. He grabbed a few more towels and place them on and around the boy and then shut off the bathroom lights. 

Bewildered still, he sits down on his own bed and waits for his father to come home. Deep in thought, he doesn’t even turn on the TV. It’s a couple of hours before John steps through the door, and Dean looks over at him when he does, his eyes moist and borderlining with tears, “I’m sorry dad, I couldn’t get him cleaned up.”

John placed his wallet on the table and then poured a salt line at the door, “what happened Dean?”

He looks over his son, who’s still filthy himself from handling the boy and giving him a bath, “he woke up and I tried to wash his hair but he…it’s like he’s never seen running water.”

His father frowns and looks around the room, “where is he now?”

“Still in the tub, I didn’t wanna scare him anymore so I left him in there.”

John’s attention snaps over to the restroom, “you left him in the tub Dean? Jesus…” His father strides over to the bathroom door, pushes it open and flips on the light.” Dean can see John in the mirror of the bathroom, how his father examines the boy in the tub, and then his father is shutting the lights off as well and closes the door behind him.

“I’ll get another room for you to wash yourself in,” John states, leaving Dean alone again.


	2. Chapter 2

The new place is smaller than the old place, he notices. He had room to roam around, find things to eat, but this place? It’s a cold white hard thing, with a metal faucet sticking out of one wall and dangling cloth at the other end. He’s never had something to cover himself up when it got cold, but it felt wonderful to have around his body. Odd, a bit uncomfortable, but it made him feel warm against the cold air and tub.

With towels wrapped around him, he stares blankly at the ceiling, it’s so different than the other place. He can’t even get out of the small barrier between him and the Thing that had been in the room before. His hands slide up against the cold white until it hits the horizontal part of the tub lip. Sitting up, he slowly lifts himself over the small barrier and lands on even colder ground. This one is different,the floor is a shiny white with crisscrossing lines that lead to another white thing that is shaped differently. 

He crawls along the ground and towards the toilet, looking down inside to find a puddle of water inside. Thirsty, the young man sticks his head into the toilet bowl and drinks. The voices outside barely registers to him as his thirst is fully quenched for the first time in his life, so much water in this bowl compared to the dribbles he’d get from burst pipes and leaks.

“Dad?” he hears, muffled through the drywall and the door, paying no mind to the sound he doesn’t understand.

John sits up, voice tired and hoarse, and he turns on the light which slightly sneaks through the crack under the door of the bathroom, “what? Were you able to get that room unlocked like I told you?”

“Yeah, I just got back cleaning off hand prints of shit on my arm, thanks.”

“Any reason why you woke me up besides complaining?”

Dean sets down his toiletry bag next to his backpack and duffle bag, “that kid in there still isn’t cleaned up, I grabbed some extra shampoo and soap from a couple other rooms.”

John still doesn’t catch his son’s drift, “okay?”

“Okay? So can you help me wash him up so he’s not sleeping in his own shit tonight?”

His father takes the blanket and sheet off from around his body and stands up, too tired to argue with something that does need to get done. Dean walks over to the bathroom door and slowly opens it, his father behind him.

Dean sees the naked boy bent by the toilet, his first thought is that the kid is throwing up and is already sick in the short time he’s been out of the hellhole he was living in, but then the sounds of water splashing around as if a dog was lapping at it rings him in. “Aw man, no don’t drink that,” he frowns and slowly presses his hand on the young man’s filthy shoulder.

The kid practically tenses up at the touch, and there’s the slight sound of a hissing growl coming from him again, and at this point Dean knows to back up or else there’s going to be another fit. Except for this time this fit doesn’t have the small tub wall blocking the feral kid in. He’s wary, almost scared and frightened of this barely-human person protecting the toilet bowl as if he’d never had a drink of water in his life.

John pushes his way in before Dean could figure out what to do next, and he pulls the kid up from under the armpits and the young man is screeching and flailing around not even a second later. Too slow, Dean thinks to himself, ashamed that his father is doing what he should have done when he first saw him drinking from the freakin’ toilet.

His father manhandles him into the tub, grabbing a set of handcuffs from his jean’s pockets and locks one around the filthy boy’s wrist and the other around the faucet. Dean watches the feral kid pull his arm back towards him with a whine, but it’s unable to slip off the rusted chrome when the handcuff hits the small diverter. 

Wild eyes stare at John as Dean’s father sits on the rim of the bathtub and watches the boy back, “I need you to blink twice if you can understand what I’m saying.”

No response, the wide eyes only stare back at him with no comprehension. John sighs and sits up from the tub to stand next to Dean, “clean him up. We’re moving out in the morning, I can’t risk any demons tracking us down.”

Alone in the bathroom again, while his father goes back to bed, Dean can’t help but feel overwhelmed by what his father is laying on his shoulders. He can’t even tell what the kid looks like beneath all the matted filth, his hazel eyes that are surrounded by popped red blood vessels from stress and the yellowed and distorted teeth are visible, even after the first layer of water that Dean was able to spray against the feral human.

Dean steps forward and sits back down on the rim of the tub, slowly trying to figure out what to do. “You can’t understand anything, can you?”

Nothing.

He half expected an answer, some sort of wish that the kid would bond with him instead of his father, as if Dean was special and was deserving, but of course he’s stuck with a stinky human sitting in the bathtub of some rundown hotel while his father gets the much needed sleep that he desperately wanted. The sooner this kid is cleaner, the sooner he can get to bed, so Dean starts up the water and grabs a washcloth from the rack above the toilet.

Once static, unmoving and staring as if he was a cat cornered by a dog, the kid is ecstatic about the water pouring out from the faucet. Excited mewling sounds comes from his throat, nothing human, only pure uncontrollable excitement. 

“You didn’t get a lot of water, did you?” Dean says softly, mostly for himself, but with hope that someday this kid would respond back.

He wets the cloth under the pouring faucet, and Dean can’t help but notice how the kid looks at the water flow as if he was watching some sort of magic trick. He takes the wash cloth to the filthy face, rubbing off the years of caked on filth and matted dirt. It takes a while, but with the kid busy focusing on the water, it was easier to clean his face off without him kicking and flailing around in the tub.  
At first he thought it was some sort of bug, possibly a tick, that was somehow glued onto his cheek, but as the dirt fell down into the tub or into the once-white washcloth, Dean found a little mole on the kid’s cheek. A stark brown-black against the pale skin.

He continues for almost twenty minutes just cleaning off his face, going through most of the washcloths that he had stolen from the other room when he took a shower himself. Pulling the long and matted hair back, Dean could see a human now. His face was too skinny, obviously underfed, but he imagined once the kid was older and had more to eat it would fill out into a strong jawline. 

Dean grabbed a pair of scissors, slowly and out of the field of view of the kid, he took it to one of the strands of matted hair. It took awhile to get through but eventually the tangled hair pulled away and he threw it on the ground of the hotel bathroom and reached for the next strand. 

Half way through cutting the next strand of hair, the human turns his head towards him and the scissors slip, slicing through Dean’s finger as if lands in the tub.

“Shit,” he stands up from the tub rim and looks at the small bead of blood forming from the cut. Nothing bad, he had worse, but the kid in the tub stares at it with hunger.

Lashing out, he tries to reach for Dean’s cut finger, only to be pulled back from the handcuff around the faucet. Dean steps backwards, away from the kid hungrily trying to grab for him and he leans against the wall of the small hotel bathroom. It was almost frightening how animalistic he is, his yellowed teeth snapping at the air, desperate and starving. Dean grabs some toilet paper without breaking eye contact with the other human and wraps it up, hiding the blood away from the kid. He immediately loses interest, turning his attention back to the pouring water from the faucet, and he sticks his mouth under the water to get a drink.

It takes over an hour for him to completely clean the kid off. Once the crust came off most of the skin, the rest came off pretty easily. Dean watches the black brown dirt covering the boy pull away to reveal a pale white kid, probably around 16 years old, since there were only patches of pubic hair. Some of his skin had sores and infected cuts, and Dean wondered how the hell a kid could have survived that long in human waste without dying of disease…which as he wipes his hands off on the last clean towel, he hopes he didn’t catch any.

Dean wraps the clean towel around the soaked kid and dries him off, patting him and rubbing the skin dry. The hair is cut short now, giving him a more suitable appearance now and Dean wonders if they could possibly bring the kid to the hospital now that he doesn’t look like too much of an abuse case.

He unlocks the handcuff around the boy’s wrist and tries to pull him up to full height. It’s hard, it seemed like the kid had never learned how to walk on two legs, Dean had only seen him crouch and crawl against the floor in the short time the kids been conscious. 

Most of his weight, probably only 90 pounds from the feel of it, leans against Dean as Dean pulls him out of the tub. He half carries him through the door of the bathroom, there’s some resistance in the kid, unsure of the new surroundings that Dean is bringing him into and the bright light of one of the hotel lamps being on.

Tired, Dean sets the naked kid down on his bed and looks over to his father, sound asleep. Still fully clothed, boots still on, but it looks like heaven to Dean who’s entire body is sore from washing and lifting some feral kid.

“Wait here,” he whispers and he grabs a pair of clean underwear and a shirt from his duffle bag and sets it next to the kid on the bed.

When Dean looks back, the kid is slumped over on the bed, not even sitting up, as if he was unable to do so without support. “I have to dress you too?” He grumbles silently and angrily grabs the shirt.

Wrestling the clothes onto him took almost 45 minutes, and Dean was about to give up but the idea of sleeping with a naked guy…while appealing at times, was not about to fly when he looked no older than a 16 year old teenager, one with disgustingly pale skin and gaunt features and patches or pubic hair that probably wouldn’t grow back due to skin sores and infections. Cleaned up or not, Dean was kind of repulsed by him.

And sometimes the fucker would wiggle out of the clothes that Dean had finally got him into, but after the third time getting it back on the kid seemed too tired himself and just let it be. He doesn’t bother with pants, leaving him in a too-large t-shirt and underwear that Dean would probably never voluntarily wear ever again. “There,” he mutters, collapsing backwards onto the bed.

He doesn’t even remember falling asleep, too tired to care about the shift in weight on the bed.

This room is bigger, about the size of his old place before the two new Things took him away. The two Things sleep on raised platforms, the ground is weirdly soft instead of hard. There’s no food here though, as he searches for rats or even a spider, maybe a cockroach. He pulls things off the raised hard platforms, a notebook and a lamp by the cord, examining it for any sort of sign of food.

There’s a rumble and a growl as something wakes up towards the hanging cloth by the door. He hides beneath the bed of the Thing that washed him, wary of the constant rumbling buzz of the monster in the room.

After about 10 minutes, it shuts off as quickly as it roared to life. With a click, there’s nothing but silence in the room again. Scared, he stays underneath the dark safety of the bed, looking around the small space for food.

It reminds him of the place he spent most of his life at, and there’s comfort in that. There’s a dead moth at the very end of bed, it looks like it had died only in the past week, so he picks it up and puts it in his mouth. There’s no taste or enjoyment, only survival, and the moth is enough to keep his hunger pains away for a little while longer since his stomach had never grew bigger to accomodate a healthy diet.

Dean wakes up to a strong stench, sour and rancid, he opens up his sleep crusted eyes. John is already awake, throwing away one of the towels and the kid is handcuffed to the hotel table and is laying there like a dog in trouble. “What happened?”

“He’s going to need diapers, we’ll pick some up on the way out. Get dressed, we’re leaving in ten minutes.”

Dean can smell the lingering stench of shit in the air and he groans, “what? He pooped on the floor?” God, he’s worse than a dog, Dean thinks to himself. Tired and sore and angry that instead of leaving the kid with proper medical attention and shit, even the CPS even though John despises them, he’s stuck with a 6 month old infant in the body of a young adult.

John grabs his own bag and opens the door of the hotel, “and Dean-“

Dean looks up at his father, kind of hoping for some recognition for all the hard work cleaning the kid up last night but John just stares back without any sort of emotion and orders, “get him dressed. He’s not an animal for god sakes.”

The door closes behind his father and Dean pulls himself out of bed and looks for the clothes that he had put the kid in last night. There’s a dark stain in the middle of the room, probably where he had took a crap, but he’s not sure. A dark stain in a cheap ass motel means nothing really. He sighs and grabs another pair of his clothes out of his duffle bag and tries to wrestle him into clothes before his father’s ten minutes are up. 

At least his father had given him another 5 minutes to get the kid ready for travel, it wasn’t enough though. After forcing the clothes back onto the naked body, Dean had less than a minute to dress himself and grab all his belongings.

The Impala starts up, the loud engine roaring to life, and the boy freaks out again. Pulling and tugging against the wooden table leg with a scared screech.

Dean loses his impatience then, “shut the hell up!” He yells, grabbing the handcuff and unlocking it. The boy continues to squirm around, but Dean is able to drag him out of the room and into the bright light of day. John opens up the backseat door and Dean half shoves and half battles him into the backseat.

He then grabs his duffle bag and flings it angrily into the backseat of the car and heads towards the passenger seat. Dean sits down and slams the Impala door shut, much to the dismay of his father.

“What’s wrong with you Dean?”

Dean doesn’t turn to face his father, where does he even start? Less than an hour of sleep, sore and tired after wrestling with a shit-covered teenager who probably can’t even count to 10, and his father has the balls to ask him what’s wrong with him after he shoved this fucker into his lap? “Nothing, let’s go,” he grits out.

About 30 minutes into the drive, Dean finally looks into the rear view mirror to look at the kid in the backseat. Expecting a squirming, barely human expression on his face, Dean is shocked to find a sullen and expressively sad look on the kid’s face. The hazel eyes are sore and puffy, dark circles under his eyes, the haircut he had given him last night is uneven and ruffled into various cow licks, and the sunken in jawline gives him the look like he hasn’t eaten properly in years.  
A pain grows in Dean’s chest, if he is sore and tired from just dealing with this wild human he can’t imagine what the young man could be going through. From what he could tell, he’s never spent anytime with humans. Unable to sit up correctly, stand, even control his bladder. Even right now he’s slumped against the window door of the Impala instead of sitting straight like Dean and his father.

Hell, he probably doesn’t even have a name. It would have been lost and forgotten among the years of isolation. Dean’s situation might be shitty, but the young man in the backseat of the Impala is even worse. He looks forward again, away from the sorry sight in the rear view mirror and tries to think of a name he can call him while the kid is in his hands.


	3. Chapter 3

Everything is confusing. Whatever he’s in right now, its tinier than the room he had lived in his entire life. The Two Things had shoved some soft ruffling cloth around his groin and butt, and every time he moved it made a sound. It was irritating and itchy and the last two times he had tried to take it off the Two Things got it back on him and made loud noises at him.

They tried to feed him soon after that, which would’ve actually made him quite happy if for the fact they hadn’t burned the meat into a weird shape and placed it on this soft mushy inedible…he pokes at the burger’s bread, nothing like the rats or bugs he had eaten his entire life.

The one with lighter hair is the one trying to feed him. A burned meat patty, some yellow sticks, and a liquid that does not taste like water at all. 

He turns away from the food, not quite hungry enough to eat the things they are giving him. He figures he will find another bug or a rat to soothe him over for another day.

The Thing trying to feed him makes a grunting angry sound and grabs his jaw. The touch was too sudden, too weird, and to frightening and he thrashes back against him in the tiny moving enclosure.

“Dean, cut it out! He’ll eat when he gets hungry!” The darker haired one yells back, his eyes focused forward on the speeding landscape.

At the other’s ones voice, he backs away from him and climbs back into the front seat, leaving him alone in the back again, “it’s like he can’t do anything without fightin’ us. I liked him better unconscious…”

He tunes them out, he’s good at that, the sounds make no sense to him and they never did. Instead he turns his attention to the zooming landscape going by, if the room they had him in before and this small moving enclosure was odd, the outside world made even less sense.

The land went on for what seemed like an eternity, and everything changes out there, nothing is constant. There is safety in constant, that much he knows, and he ducks away into his blanket so he doesn’t have to stare at the zooming landscape, too frightening for him to watch.

Laying across the cushion doesn’t console him much, too used to the solid ground beneath his laying spot. It sinks in and shifts when he moves, and when the thing he is jiggles and shakes him around enough all ready.

He feels his stomach ache, an empty pit growing with nausea as he focuses on the unsteady movement of…whatever he is in, he just wants his room back. A steady, unchanging room. Or even the first place they had taken him too, it was weird and strange, but at least it didn’t move around constantly.

Dean rambles on in the front of the car, missing the first groan of pain coming from the backseat. Finally, he turns around at sound of a groan and a gag just in time to see their newcomer vomit all over his baby, “no! Shit…aw man…”

“What happened?” John asks, trying to look back through the rear view mirror.

“Austin just threw up all over the damn upholstery.”

John doesn’t look angry, like Dean expected him too, but he’s not exactly happy either, “yeah, I guessed that would’ve happened eventually.”

He stares at his father for a moment, “you knew he was gonna spew and didn’t even give him a bag or something?”

“Yeah, cause that kid is gonna use a bag to throw up in Dean,” his voice is laced with mean sarcasm.

But Dean isn’t offended, this wasn’t the worst thing his father has said to him, “stop the car so we can clean this crap up before it stains.”

A few minutes later, they are pulling off the interstate and are at a gas station. Dean had ran in to grab napkins and a cup of water while John stayed with the kid.

“I’m guessing you’ve never been in a car before,” he says to the newly named Austin.

There’s no reply, and John doesn’t expect one, but he does finally gets a good look at the kid he had taken in less than 48 hours ago. He can see why Dean wants to dump him in a hospital, the kid is severely malnourished and his skin hasn’t seen a lick of sunlight. Only wearing the diapers that they had wrestled him into a stolen blanket from one of the hotels, he is huddled up far away from John as possible. 

Trust, if he even knows what the is, is something long earned for John. Something he doesn’t have the time and patience for, with being on the road and driven for revenge of his wife.

When he sees Dean walking back towards the car, a handful of napkins in both hands, he finally sees what Dean sees. Opening the door for his son, he takes some of the napkins from him and helps clean up the vomit in silence. There’s not much Dean can say at this point, his father wants to keep him, so apparently he has to stand by and watch as his beloved car is destroyed by human waste. 

It’s not the best cleaning job, it will need to be washed and vacuumed to its original state, but at least most of it is gone.

Leaving the kid in the backseat, both John and Dean exit the car to throw away the used rags into the trash. Eager to hit the road again, Dean starts walking away from his father but John grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him back towards him. He lets go of his son, trying not to meet the confused eyes that seemingly are asking him why they are still standing in some shit hole of a gas station.

John sighs and hangs his head, “you’re right,” he forces out. Even a stubborn man needs to know when he’s defeated, “what we’re…I’m doing Dean? I’m trying to drag you and Austin for 500 miles for a job that probably isn’t even an actual hunt.”

Dean’s eyebrows furrow up, grasping what his father is saying, “so you agree with me now? Dump him at a hospital and let the professionals take care of him? Cause dad…I ain’t got the first clue how to even feed him-“

“No, we have to keep him,” John states. There is no budging on that one. The kid knows something about the demon who took away his wife, that much is sure.

“Then you’re fine with dragging him across the country for a maybe-hunt? Huh? You’re fine with shoving some butt naked kid in your son’s lap who you never even let take care of a goldfish, never mind another fuckin’ human being,” he spits it out. He’s never questioned his father’s orders, his judgement, ever, but there is a line and John has pushed it. Sometime between the hour of sleep he got at the last hotel and the hour long wrestling match trying to get a fresh pair of diapers on an adult sized toddler.

His father’s eyes widen at his son’s outburst, “you have a problem with how I raised you, boy?” John stands taller, defiant over his son’s try at rebellion. 

Dean looks away, jaw tightening, fighting against saying the words that he so desperately wants to say, “no sir.”

“Then you’re gonna listen to what else I’m gonna say, then, after that, you’re gonna go take care of that goldfish, you hear me?

“Yes sir,” he’s not sure what’s worse. His father mocking his want for a normal kid’s childhood, even if it is as silly as a goldfish or referring to Austin as just a pet to be taken care of for his father’s purposes. Dean can’t help but feel rage inside of him, even if Austin is a pain in his ass, he doesn’t deserve to be dragged around the country because he might know something about a demon. He wants to tell and scream this into his father’s face, but he stays still, waiting and listening for his father’s next words.

John looks over to the Impala, the kid’s form visible as a lump beneath the hotel blankets, then he takes out the Impala keys and hands them towards his son, “I want you to take the kid to a safe house and take care of Austin until we get some information out of him.”

Dean slowly takes the keys away from his father, shocked that his father is handing the keys over to him, “what about you?”

“I’ll get another car, take care of that job up in Washington and…just figure out where to go from there.” The two men are silent for a moment, “I can’t take care of him Dean, when I look at him, when I see what the demons did to him, all I see is Mary…I can’t, you get him back to health you hear me Dean? Get him back to health, get the information out of him, and then we can find his family and bring him back…but not until those demonic sons of bitches are dead. Or else, we’re just handing the kid back over to them if we let him go.”

They’ve been separated before. Many times. But they always had plans to meet back up within a couple of days and never had his father given him the Impala keys and told him to part ways. Dean grasps the Impala keys tighter and starts to walk away, not wanting to show any emotion towards his father for a job he must do, “I’ll call you when I find a safe house,” is all he says to his father.  
He climbs into the Impala’s driver’s seat, a place he’s been in only a couple times before. John had insisted on teaching Dean how to drive only after he had successfully hot-wired a stolen care. Refusing to look at his father, he places his hands on the steering wheel and puts the keys into the ignition.

The Impala roars to life and startles Austin in the back, Dean can watch him wiggle around under the blankets through the rearview mirror. But after a couple of seconds, making sure Austin calms back down, Dean is backing out of the gas station parking lot and hitting the interstate. Only looking in the rearview mirror, seeking out his father, when John is nothing but a speck.

Dean is driving down the two-lane blacktop for a couple hours before he realizes he doesn’t even know where to go. There’s a couple of friends of John’s that could house them for the time being, Pastor Jim and Caleb, a few others. But they were friends of John’s, only acquaintances to Dean.

In his gut, without him knowing it consciously yet, Dean had already been driving in the direction of Sioux Falls. If there was a man in South Dakota that Dean could call his uncle, regardless of blood relation, it would be Bobby Singer. When John had to go on jobs by himself when Dean was younger, it was always Bobby Singer that took care of him and babysat.

It only seemed natural to take Austin somewhere where he could be taken care of.

John and Bobby’s falling out over 7 years ago had almost dampened the relationship between Dean and Bobby, heck, Dean hadn’t even seen the man since he was 19. Not even old enough to buy liquor, with a real ID of course. Maybe times had changed, maybe Bobby didn’t even want to see Dean anymore along with his father, but there was no one else Dean could trust Austin with.

It was a 16 hour drive, a couple more pit stops to refuel the Impala and take a piss, but he finally got there. He’s sure that Austin had more than filled his diaper, but Dean didn’t want to wrestle with him again on the side of the interstate with no back up to help.

Dean figured a few more hours with a soiled diaper isn’t anywhere as bad as living in a soiled room for several years. But the fecal and urine smell became increasingly worse during those hours. He jumped out of the car as soon as he parked the Impala outside of Bobby Singer’s home, desperately wanting a shower and maybe about 20 car fresheners inside his baby. The junkyard, with it’s oily and dirt smell was like clean linen stepping out of the Impala’s trademark Austin smell.

As soon as Dean turns around to face the front door, Bobby Singer is already there, greeting him with a shot gun and a slightly older face, “hey Bobby, how ya doin’? Dean smiles big, not afraid of the shot gun pointed at him.

And his instincts are right, Bobby puts the shotgun down and starts down the stairs, his knee obviously wearing on him as he slowly descends.

“It’s been a long ass time boy,” Bobby says, embracing Dean. He pulls away after a couple of seconds and stares at the Impala, “where’s John?”  
“Washington. There was a job and he didn’t want me there.”

Bobby stares at Dean, confused, “and he just gave you the Impala?”

“Yup,” Dean grabs the keys from the leather jacket pocket and dangles them in front of Bobby, “I would say it’s my lucky day with a car like that but…”

“But?”

Dean pockets the car keys and walks over to the backseat door, “but, he gave me something else…which is why I came here.”

There’s a hundred other possibilities running through Bobby’s head as to what John could have possibly given to Dean that he’d let him have the car and let him come down to Sioux Falls after that huge fall out they had all those years ago.

A vampire maybe, a demon possibly, some sort of dangerous monster not yet discovered by man, but the lump in the blanket in the backseat didn’t exactly send chills up his spine, “what is it?” He asks, watching as Dean tries to pick it up, whatever it is.

“It’s probably better if we get him into the house and then let him out of the blanket…” Dean huffs out as he tries to manhandle it…him…out of the backseat.

“Yeah, sure,” Bobby states, out of confusion mostly. He opens the front door for Dean and whatever is in the blanket and closes it behind him.

Dean sets the heavy lump wrapped in some shitty hotel blanket on the floor and steps back. “I think we should kind just sit back for awhile and let him come out by himself.” He’s sure he’s read that before, about cats, he thinks, back in middle school. New places need slow adjustment, he kinda feels proud about that one, pride that maybe he could take care of Austin, just not in an unstable hotel room or a car.

“Let him come out by himself? Dean, I don’t know what the hell are you talking about, you got some sort of dog under them blankets?” That makes even less sense than Dean having a bloodthirsty monster in the backseat. He knows John damn well enough that a dog would have never set foot into John’s beloved Impala. Bobby watches the lump wiggle around, lifting the blanket up so that whatever is inside can peek around his new environment.

The blanket falls down to the ground again and whatever is under the blanket has laid back down into a lump. Dean sighs, a sound Bobby can only assume is disappointment. “I’m guessing whatever it is ain’t very cuddly then.”

Dean laughs at that, a hoarse and sad laugh, “not at all…you got any beer?”

“Does a piece of shit have flies?” He states and walks over to the kitchen, Dean following. He grabs a couple of cold ones from the fridge and hands one over to Dean. “So, are you on baby sitting duty or something? What’s under there?”

“Baby sitting duty.”  
Bobby stares back, amusement in his eyes, “Dean Winchester. Monster hunter and part time baby sitter.”

There’s a moment of silence as Dean takes a drink of alcohol, “I’m serious Bobby. It’s a freakin’ adult sized baby in there. Diapers and all. I’m sure you’ve smelled it.”

The smile on Bobby’s face falters, it sinks in that Dean wasn’t joking about baby sitting, “my sense of smell has gone out the window years ago.”

Dean snorts, “I’d trade you noses but I wouldn’t want that elephant trunk on my face.”

Bobby starts towards the living room again, looking down at the form inside the floral patterned blanket. “I don’t smell anything, Dean…”

As Dean steps into the room, it dawns on him that he can’t smell it either. “Oh fuck,” is all he says before he’s dashing out of Bobby’s house and down the porch steps towards his car.

Slowly, Bobby follows him and watches from the backdoor. Dean pulls out a very soiled diaper with two of his fingers, pulling it away from him as much as he can. Disgusted, Dean takes the diaper over to one of Bobby’s trash cans and quickly dumps it in there.

As soon as its gone, Dean shivers and groans, stepping away from the trash can and goes back over to Impala to grab the rest of the adult sized diapers in the trunk.

“You’re fuckin’ serious,” Bobby states, dumfounded, as Dean climbs the porch steps with the diapers in one hand.

“Yeah, and I’d love to take a bath in some disinfectant right about now,” Dean groans in reply.

Bobby watches Dean drop the diapers down on the floor and soon Dean is right next to the blanket, dropping down so that he’s sitting next to the lump, “you gotta come out man. There’s no way I’m letting you crap all over Bobby’s floor.”

“Of all the things you Winchesters brought to my house…why the hell ain’t he in some retirement home or a hospital, Dean?” Bobby pictures an old man underneath the blanket, always picturing those adult sized diapers being used on 90 year old men who can’t control themselves anymore.

Dean scoffs and looks towards Bobby, “believe me, I tried that. No dice,” he says and turns back towards Austin.

He lifts the blanket up and away from Austin’s who is now butt-naked with some human waste smeared on his backside from kicking the diaper off.

Bobby’s eyes widen when he sees the young kid, can’t be any older than 20 years old, “what the hell…”

Austin spots Bobby and scoots closer to Dean, hiding himself up into a ball against Dean’s chest.   
“Dean, how old is he?”

“I ain’t got a clue. I’m thinking 16 years old just by the looks of him. Skinny son of a bitch.”

Bobby keeps standing and looks down at the two on his living room floor. He could see the kid’s ribs and spine protruding under the pale white skin littered with sores and scars. “I don’t understand, he looks sick as a dog, he should be in a hospital Dean.”

Dean looks away, grabbing a diaper slowly so that Austin doesn’t run and hide away from him, “Dad said I couldn’t. They’d be looking for him and…” he sighs, “the way we found him Bobby, it’s better this way.”

“Who’s they?”

“Demons. My dad found the colt and thought he got the location of that demon that killed my mom but he was wrong. It was just some warehouse hideaway for this guy here.”

Slowly, Bobby sits down on the couch near the two, “the demons had him? You sure he’s human?”

“Course Bobby. This ain’t amateur hour. He’s human. Can’t do anything human, but he’s human…” Dean shifts a bit, trying to get the diaper on without Austin knowing, “might need your help here getting this thing on. Austin really takes those Tarzan movies to heart.”

Bobby nods and helps Dean get the diaper on, it got more and more difficult as Austin realized what was going on and started to squirm around.

Eventually the two got it on and Austin crawled quickly away from Dean and back to the comfort of the dark cover of the blanket.

“So, he can’t talk. Can’t eat. Can’t shit properly…John is way over his head on this, Dean.” Bobby says to Dean as they sit down at the kitchen table, cluttered with research papers and unfinished meals.

“That’s why I came to you, Bobby. I can’t take care of him by myself like my dad wants me to.”

Bobby laughs, “not sure I can do a better job. I sure ain’t Mary Poppins.” They both take a drink of their beer and Bobby continues, “so, Austin. His name or did you give it to him?”

“The warehouse was around Austin, Texas. My dad didn’t approve of the first two names so that one was the one that stuck.”

A smirk grows on Bobby’s face as the beer bottle leaves his lips, “and what were the first two names, Metallica and Lynyrd Skynyrd?”

“You got some psychic powers there Bobby that we don’t know about?” He softly laughs back.

“How long have you had him?”

“About three days. Four? I’ve lost track, I haven’t had much sleep since my dad put him in my hands, you know?”

Bobby shakes his head, “that man…putting too much responsibility on your shoulders.”

“He’s doing the best he can, Bobby.”

No use arguing a Winchester, “take the room upstairs if you want some sleep. It’s full of crap but there’s a sleeping bag somewhere. I’ll take care of Austin while you get your rest.”

Dean nods, doesn’t even argue that his father put Austin in his care. Sleep sounds freakin’ amazing to him right now, especially after that long drive up to South Dakota, “we found him in that warehouse, living in his own shit, Bobby. Years of it. Rat bones and god knows what else just…I said he’s human but…at the same time, he’s not?”

“Get some rest Dean, I said I can take care of him. Don’t worry. We can tackle this thing tomorrow when you ain’t gonna pass out on me.”

The younger man scoots his half drank beer away from him, wanting sleep more than the rest of the alcohol more.

Bobby drinks the rest of his beer in peace and silence before walking over to the living room. He doesn’t dare to enter though, just watches Austin crawl around the floor of his house as he looks around in curiosity. 

In all his years hunting, killing supernatural freaks that are so far from humanity, nothing freaks him out more than this young adult crawling around in a diaper, looking so lost and out of place in his home.

He watches him for about five minutes, just seeing where he wonders off to before Austin turns the corner and is in Bobby’s study. Bobby slowly follows and watches as Austin’s arm extends out to touch one of the piles of books on the floor.

Austin’s hand touches the book on the top, and keeps pushing until the pile of books tumble over. The suddenness and the noise sends Austin scooting backwards and away from the pile, just staring at the heap of fallen books on the floor with wide and frightened eyes.

Like watching an animal documentary, Austin is fascinating to Bobby. An obvious human that has no link to humanity. He’s read cases about feral humans before, wild abandoned children who grew up in the wild and found a way to survive.

But with what Dean has told him, Austin had lived in a dark cell his entire life. No interaction with the outside world except for the rodents and insects that found their way in through cracks.

He’s good with researching a problem and figuring out the cure for any supernatural ailment, but this one here, as he stares at Austin, is well beyond his reach.

The kid is still crouched over in the corner, staring at the books as if it was something that was about to eat him.  
He curses John under his breath for leaving Dean with a bite bigger than the both of them could chew and picks up the phone.

“Hey, Sheriff Mills, it’s Bobby Singer,” he pauses as the woman on the other end cusses him out, “yeah…in return for that…I got a problem here that I could use your help on.”


	4. Chapter 4

She’s not a hunter, but she knows about the supernatural. Bobby had been the one to save her and her family from the spirit that plauged their house. Jody figured that being a police officer was enough saving and stress for her lifetime and chose to safely lay her knowledge of the supernatural into Bobby’s hands.

He’s mentioned that there are other hunters that do the same thing he does, speaks about a young man that isn’t his son but might as well be, but she doesn’t give him an easy time.

Bobby Singer was, and still is, the drunk of her county jurisdiction. And quite the nuisance when it comes to the ‘unsolved crimes’ that Jody has slyly slipped away under the desk, unmarked physically but it’s labeled in her mind as the files that couldn’t possibly be explained away without her and Bobby getting locked up in a psych ward.

The gruff old drunk rarely calls her, she recalls this might actually be the second time she’s picked up the phone and Bobby Singer was on the end, “fucking hell Bobby, what did you step into this time?”

“It wasn’t me this time,” Bobby replies back, his voice tired.

“Who was it?”

Bobby is silent on the other end for several seconds, and Jody starts to get impatient, “well?”

“You know that kid I always talk about, Dean?”

“Yeah, he’s practically your son, I can tell by the way you talk about him.”

She senses what is a very brief smile across his face and he continues, “well, he’s the one that really stepped into it this time. It’s…it’s pretty big. I need your help on it.”

Jody sighs, “I ain’t a hunter Bobby, whatever this is, it ain’t my career field. You know that.”

“You’re the only person I know who can help and understand. Jody, I wouldn’t be callin’ you if I didn’t think it was important that you come over here quick.”

Jody nods, to nobody, just a natural reaction and replies, “sure. Fine. It better be worth my time or I’m blocking this caller ID.”

Bobby’s gruff laughter comes from the other end, “ain’t the only phone I got, Officer Mills.”

For a small town, she gets there in about 20 minutes. Obviously she has her doubts about how big of a problem Bobby and Dean are in. They are hunters, never had a child of their own and probably won’t ever. Watching Austin lay down on the floor of his study after a scary and tiring session of looking at everything, was enough for his weary bones. He couldn’t imagine trying to get this kid to stand up, let alone eat or talk somewhat properly.

The way it looks, Austin had never learned to stand up, his back is probably so used to being hunched over in a crawl that it’s just more natural for him this way instead of on two feet.

Jody rings the door bell while he is deep in thought, it’s not a loud door bell but he still hopes it didn’t wake up Dean. He wants Jody in and out before Dean knows that another person knows about Austin. Bobby just really doesn’t feel like arguing with Dean over it, he knows as well as Dean that this is the best option for him.

“So what’s the problem, Mr. Singer?”

He widens the door for her, gesturing for her to enter, “got a bit of a stray problem, you could say.”

She resists rolling her eyes, “you called me here for a dog, Bobby?”

Jody follows Bobby to his study and as he opens the door, Jody’s smirk falls completely when she sees the naked boy laying on the ground, “what the fuck, Bobby?”

“Oh…yeah, probably wasn’t the best way going about this.”

“You gonna explain what’s going on or am I gonna have to pull a gun on you and arrest your perverted ass?” Her hand is already readying on the gun still in her thigh holster, she hadn’t even had the chance to go home and get into her civilian clothes.

Bobby puts his hands up and sighs, “Dean brought that kid over this morning. Apparently he hasn’t had any human contact since…god knows when, and he doesn’t really care for diapers.” He looks around the room for any sign of a diaper dropped on the ground, he’ll probably have to get his dog to go sniff it out for him.

Jody doesn’t move her hand from her weapon, but she relaxes a bit, “so you’re saying Dean found this kid out of no where and dragged him to your house instead of a hospital?”

“No. Dean found him in a demon’s hideout, apparently whoever that kid is is important enough to be kept by demons for more than a decade.”

“Demons? Like the Exorcist?”

Bobby shakes his head, “worse. I’d take rotating heads and vomit over a real demon any day,” his voice seems to shake. Jody doesn’t press, she knows a grieving witness when she sees one.

Her hand drops from the gun and she walks inside the study to get a better look at the boy, “what’s his name?”

“Dean named him Austin, doesn’t really respond to anything though.”

As soon as Jody gets close enough to the boy that he worries for his own safety on pure instinct alone, he shoots up to all four limbs and sprint-crawls across the room and underneath the desk…probably where the fallen diaper is, Bobby thinks.

“He’s skinnier than a twig! How old is he?”

Bobby shrugs, “no clue. Dean says he’s guessing that he’s about 15 or 16 given the patches of…hair, you know.”

“You know as well as I do pubic hair doesn’t grow in patches, he probably has 10 kinds of skin infections that stopped it from growing in certain places. I’d have to get a better look but…he’s skin and bones Bobby, but his bone structure looks fully grown.”

“You sayin’ he’s an adult?”

Jody shrugs, “I’m saying he might be older than he looks, just severely stunted in certain aspects. Usually wisdom teeth grow in at around 20 years of age, if he has those then there’s a safe bet that he’s at least 20.”

With a snort, Bobby responds, “yeah, if you can get him to hold still that long to look at him. He seems to trust Dean a bit, probably cause he tried to feed him and gave him that blanket, but he ran off the second we tried to get the diaper back on.”

“He needs a hospital, Bobby. There’s nothing I can do here as an officer.”

“I need your help, trying to get him up on his feet and talkin’. Me and Dean, we ain’t cut out for that sort of thing. You have your little boy, you know what it’s like.”

Jody looks over at Bobby, sympathetic, “I know what it’s like to be a mother, yeah. But he doesn’t need a mother. You know as much as I know that he’s feral, Bobby, he’s got the mental capabilities to learn but his brain is well past that development stage that my kids in right now. He probably won’t even speak probably even if you got Henry Higgins to teach him. You need a doctor or someone who knows how to work with adults with learning disabilities.”

“You think you can find me someone like that?”

“I can try, but if you’re trying to keep him on the down low because of these…demons…it’s going to be a tough thing to do. Especially since feral humans are huge news stories, you get the wrong doctor and Austin here is going to be a headline.”

Bobby doesn’t reply back, knowing that she’s right. Raising Dean while his father dumped him on his doorstep occasionally hadn’t been easy but at least Dean was fully capable of walking and talking when he first met him.

How the hell do you get a person to learn how to talk? He wonders to himself, it’s something so simple that almost every human does it with ease but they had the luxury of cooing and baby-talking adults paving the way for them. Austin doesn’t seem to even hear Bobby and Jody talking right next to him while he’s under the table.

They are silent together as Jody moves around Bobby’s study and sits down and lays so that she’s eye level with Austin who is also laying on the ground.

Her first impressions of him were correct, his skin hasn’t been receiving enough vitamin D or muscle movement to keep it from growing sores and become so easily scratched and infected. Even though she wants to give the kid some privacy, it was needed for her to examine his pubic hair patches. It was completely visible, Austin had no sense of human society when it came to his genitalia, so she slowly took out her flashlight and looked it over. Her flashlight roams down his legs. It was thick and coarse, the usual hair on a man’s body post puberty but it was all in patches. Places were scars and sores and scratch marks had hindered the hair cells all but useless.

His entire body shakes with fright and when she looks over to his face, his wide eyes are enough for her to click the flashlight off and stand up.

“Bobby…I’ll help you. For the sake of this kid I’ll try to find someone who can help with him.”

Bobby smiles gently, “thank you Jody.”

“Don’t thank me. I’d punch you in the face and take that kid straight to a hospital if it was up to me. But you know more about the supernatural than I do and if you say its better for him here then…I’ll trust you. As much as I don’t want to, I will.”

Still, a somewhat of a victory he supposes.

Dean wakes up in the afternoon, stiff from laying on the spare blankets and a sleeping bag that Bobby had left over in one of the junk rooms. It was the best sleep he ever had.

“Mornin’ sunshine,” Bobby states when he sees Dean enter into his kitchen. He’s reheating a can of refried beans but there’s also a pot of coffee sitting there. Bobby isn’t unfamiliar with the long nights of research. He hands Dean a stack of papers he printed off so that he could still have his laptop while Dean reviewed all the pages he had saved in his book marks.

“What’s this?” Dean asks, balancing the papers in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other.

Bobby points to the stack, “research.”

The young hunter sits down at the table, across from Bobby and sets the papers and the coffee mug down, “about what?”

“About Abraham Lincoln,” he sarcastically scolds, “what do you think it’s about? I pulled all the reports and papers I could find about feral children. How they were able to adjust to their new world.”

Dean rifles through the papers and nods, “okay. It’s a bit wordy.”

“Wordy? You expecting a picture book?”

“No, Bobby. I’m just saying it’s a lot of info to read through.”

Bobby pokes his finger at the pile of papers, “those are all the reported cases of feral children and the documents that I could get to. If anything, it ain’t wordy enough.”

His eyebrows rise in disbelief, “wait, this is everything you could find?”

“Aside from some novels I’d like to borrow from the library, yeah. There’s not that many reported cases. Children don’t usually survive out in the wild by themselves. Humans are social creatures Dean, without social interaction they don’t tend to put in the effort to live.”

“Yeah, and your a prime example of being a social creature,” Dean smiles lightly as he sips his coffee.

Bobby ignores that statement and continues, “Most of these cases have feral children interacting with another species for survival. They adapt the way animals speak to each other as a way to join the group and live. Did you know if the demons had any communication with the kid?”

Dean shakes his head and rummages through the papers, not really reading them since Bobby is giving him the run down anyways, “no. From what I remember, it was just a cell that had obviously been lived in without any plumbing or a maid for a shit ton of years…literally.”

“So the demons had no contact with him?”

The young hunter is silent as he thinks about the room, he tried not to stay close to it for very long, not wanting to remember the way he found Austin. But there was a detail that striked out pretty odd to him. “There was one thing. There was a dog bowl just sitting on top of…you know, all that caked up crap.”

At that, Bobby’s interest completely peaks, “a dog bowl? So they were feeding him?”

“I guess, I didn’t get a good look at it. Kinda had my shirt all the way up to my nose and wanted to get out of there, but yeah. One of the cheap plastic dog bowls you can pick up at Wal-Mart or something. It wasn’t like a metal dog bowl, it had these cartoon bones and balls on it.”

The older hunter stands up, if it wasn’t for the stiff and aging joints it would’ve looked as if Bobby was excited. His rushed voice gives off the excitement where his body couldn’t, “Dean, I’m gonna go buy one of those bowls and see what happens when Austin sees it. I’ll be right back.”

Before Dean could say anything back, Bobby is bolting out of the front door and the growl of his rust bucket roars to life. “Uh…huh…” he goes back to his coffee, pulls out a metal flask, and pours some alcohol in it. He takes a drink then, closes his eyes and relaxes.

He’s not sure what to do now that Bobby practically ditched him and Austin is sleeping in the study. Dean figures he hasn’t seen Austin since that morning when he all but crashed on that rough sleeping bag and immediately fell to sleep.

Perhaps his mood will be better towards the feral kid now that he’s had his beauty sleep.

Dean stands up and walks towards the study, opening the door and shutting it quietly behind him.

It smells like shit in here, and Dean isn’t surprised to find one sitting in the corner of the room, just mocking him for having to clean it up now. He sighs and grabs the diaper bag from the corner and takes out another adult sized diaper, “Austin, you need to wear these until you know what a damn toilet it.”

Of course, it’s just silent. Why does he even bother trying to talk to the kid, it’s just a waste of oxygen, really.

Dean goes back into the kitchen to grab paper towels, a trash bag, and lots of cleaning supplies. The stain is almost gone when he hears a desperate squeaking sound.

His line of sight follows the direction of the sound and Dean finds Austin tightly grabbing a squirmy and screeching rat. “No!” Dean yells and stands up to full hight.

Austin backs away, not letting go of the screeching rat, and stares at Dean like a hungry predator protecting its kill. He keeps eye contact with Dean, not to scare him or freak him out, he has no concept of doing that purposely to another human. He only keeps eye contact because he feels threatened that Dean will steal away his food, and god is he hungry. That dead moth held him over for a couple of hours, but he’s been starving since.

The huge and plump rat will be days of sustenance for him, it’s a precious Thanksgiving meal for him as he bites down onto the rat’s head and pulls with a strong grip, not breaking eye contact with the Thing in the room, making loud sounds at him.

Dean moves forward and tries to grab the rat out of Austin’s hands but Austin keeps his tight grip on the now dead and decapitated rat as he chews hungrily. He swallows the fresh meat but spits the skull and other attached bones out on the ground next to Dean’s feet.

“You are so fuckin’ gross,” Dean backs away from the fresh rat bones, and he just stares with disgust as Austin eats the rest of the rat and spits up the rest of the bones that he can’t chew and swallow.

There’s a banging noise from the front yard door closing, and Bobby’s footsteps coming towards the study. The door opens and Bobby looks from the naked and feral man to the older hunter just kind of looking between them both. Dean gives Bobby his full attention though, to the one who can respond back, “you got the dog bowl?”

Bobby nods and pulls it out of the Wal-Mart bag, “not sure if its the same kind or not.”

“It’s close enough, from what I remember.”

The dog bowl gets set on the ground, right in Austin’s line of sight so that there is no mistaking that he would see it or not.

His interest turns from the mauled bits of rat in his hand to the dog bowl, with interest. “What’s he got in his hands?”

“Dead rat, I guess he doesn’t like your cookin’, Bobby.”

Bobby sighs, it seems like the demons weren’t using the dog bowl to feed him if he’s used to eating live flesh from rodents.  
Austin crawls across the floor and examines the dog bowl. Dean can see some sort of recognition in his eyes, but there is also confusion, and it’s enough for Dean, “he knows its not the same bowl.”

“Maybe it was what was inside the bowl? It’s obvious they weren’t trying to feed him puppy chow or I’d still have a rodent infestation.”

“Who the hell knows, I don’t think like a demon and I wouldn’t know what they hell they were trying to do with a damn dog bowl.”

Bobby picks up the dog bowl and tucks it back into the Wal-Mart bag, “guess I’ll get my 3 bucks back then.”

Dean stays in the study, watching over Austin (after successfully getting a new diaper back on) as he reads the print outs that Bobby had given him.

He can hear the rumble of his voice through the door, he’s on phone calls again, helping out other hunters.

Morning comes without Dean even realizing it, the room starts to glow with a warm orange and Dean looks down at his cellphone’s clock. Almost seven o’clock, and damn, he’s tired again. Austin is sprawled out on the floor, looking comfy in his stolen hotel blanket. It’s the only time Dean can stand looking at him, his wild eyes are relaxed and soften when he’s asleep. Almost as if he could see who Austin could have been if it wasn’t for those demons.

He wishes that Austin could stay in this moment, just relaxed and at ease in this new place. Dean can't imagine what the kid dreams about, if he dreams at all, there's not much life experience his subconscious can dwell on.

Stiffly, he sits up and quietly slips out of the door and makes his way to Bobby's kitchen for some coffee.

Austin twitches, finally letting his body move and his breath return to normal now that the threat finally left the room. He sits up, still wrapped in the warmth of the blanket and blearily looks around the brightened room. Way too bright for his sensitive eyes, he slinks back underneath Bobby's table and lays down, bored - but it's what he's used to.

His fingers shake as he pulls the blanket back around himself.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be aware that I changed the ending to the last chapter, please reread the last few paragraphs!
> 
> I had to do this because this is a story I am writing as I go, I have certain elements planned but nothing too specific. Introducing Jessica Moore at this time seemed like something that could take the story in a new direction and help me break out of writer's block but it just had the opposite effect.
> 
> I'm sorry! I try not to do this and this probably won't happen again, but I had to go back and edit it so I can keep writing without being hindered. :(

Please be aware that I changed the ending to the last chapter, please reread the last few paragraphs!

* * *

 

Austin has felt this way before, sick to his stomach, the sweating, dry heaving, so shaky he can barely move. He did what he always did before They brought in the next bowl full of blood, he rolled up into a ball, grasped his sides, and rode the pain out. 

It was the only thing he _could_ do.

There's the warm blanket wrapped around him this time, but it only makes him feel even hotter and worse, so he kicks it away from himself and returns back to his rolled up position under the table.

Both of those men have been gone for several hours, just leaving him alone in this pain, and he hopes that they would bring back that bowl. Not empty. But full of what should've been there. His disappointment of seeing it empty just seemed to trigger his body into withdrawal, even though he usually lasts for a few more days before he needs the next hit.

He remembers that the one with short hair and freckles, he had cut himself on those blades he was using when he was trimming Austin's hair. He has what he needs, but _won't give it to him_.

Slowly, he peers around the table, unsure if the two men are coming back or not, and looks for something similar to the blades that the Short Hair was using. His body, fatigued and weak, struggles to push himself up as he places his hands on top of the table he was hiding under, and climbs on top.

It's a struggle, but with the chair right next to the table he's able to use that as a step stool and get on top of the table. He pushes things around, kicking off the books and papers as he turns on the wooden frame, and then, finds what he needs.

It looks nothing like the thing Short Hair used to clip his hair, but its sharp, he finds out, when he touches the wrong end of it and draws out some of his own blood. He's cut open his skin several times, tasted his own blood trying to fix the need for it, but it doesn't do anything. He needs _Their_ blood, the one that smells of sulfur but tastes sweet and addicting going down.

He tries to slip down from the table, using the chair again to get back down to the floor and the safety of the darkness under the table, when the chair loses its balance and he slides off and flops onto the floor in a loud crash. 

Unharmed, he grabs the knife that slipped away from him when he fell and hides it under the blanket. The footsteps start towards the door and he hides back underneath the table, his body already so worn out that he needs to catch his breath before he can get Their blood.

"Austin?" It calls, it's the Short Hair one but there's another pair of footsteps echoing his. The Older is also there, with its salt and pepper beard and beat up baseball cap on top of his head.

"Shouldn't have left him alone that long, Dean."

The Short Hair scoffs and walks toward the blanket pile resting near the table, "looks like he just knocked over your chair."

The chair is being picked up and set back on all four legs, he can't see Short Hair, but he's right next to him.

Austin continues to shake, brimming with the need for it, and as soon as Short Hair's knees hit the floor and he starts to lean down to look at him underneath the table, he shoots out his hand and grabs the knife, bringing it back towards him with a quick slice to Dean's arm.

"Fuck!" Dean shouts, as blood starts to dribble down his arm. He's about to pull away and stand back up when Austin lunges from underneath the table and pins his arm down with a snarl. His mouth makes contact with the bloody wound on his arm, but it's like a vicious bite than a baby's suckling. 

Dean pushes the kid off him easily, after all he weighs - at max - 100 pounds. And there's a sickly look to him, besides the blood dribbling down his mouth and chin as Austin stares back at Dean, shaking and sweating.

The knife is still in Austin's hands, but he drops it once he coughs up some of Dean's blood.

It doesn't taste right, he notices, it's not getting rid of the shakes and sweats and hurt like the blood back then did. He groans in pain and coughs up more, the blood coming back up on him and over his body and the floor of Bobby's study.

"The hell he do that for?"

Dean grabs his arm, applying pressure on the cut and hisses, "how the hell would I know. This fucker thinks rats are Happy Meals here. He probably thinks I'm an all you can eat buffet."

Dean stands over him, he's so tall and huge as Austin looks up from his pathetic position as he just sits on the floor. The Older comes to stand right next to Dean, leaning down to get a better look at him, and he coughs up some more over the Older's face. His eyes close as the blood splatters over him, annoyed, he wipes it away and stands back up.

"He doesn't look so good Dean," he states, wiping away the Dean's blood from his face with a rag.

"Yeah, no shit, he tried to drink my blood Bobby. And vamps don't have to use a damn knife," he replies back, kicking the knife out of Austin's relaxed grip.

It slides across the floor with ease and Austin slowly moves his hand away from Dean's boot, Austin's eyes track it but he makes no motion to go after it. There's too much pain in his stomach, it feels like it's on fire, so close to what he needed but instead of accepting it, it's coming back up on him.

Austin finally looses his strength to sit up and flops on the ground and heaves the rest of the blood back onto Bobby's rug. He wasn't able to drink much, not nearly enough blood that They used to give him, but it's still enough that it hurts and stings as it comes back up his throat and spills out of his mouth.

He wants to go back to that Place. The Place that he knew every crevice and every dent and it was dark and they always gave him enough blood to tide him over. 

Desperate and needy, he let's out a pathetic scream. It's not loud, his vocal cords haven't been used in years, but its enough to grab Dean and Bobby's attention. 

Austin looks like a giant toddler throwing a tantrum, except this toddler is sweaty and shaking and looks like he's been through hell and back and not a ray of sunshine ever hit his skin. He rolls onto his back and kicks Bobby's desk in anger. It's tiring but he wants to go back. He wants these two to bring him back. He needs to show them what he wants and if he can't make those sounds that they make then he'll- he keeps kicking at the desk until his body gets so fatigued he can't anymore.

He just lays there, staring up at the popcorn ceiling, so different than the smooth cement one he had stared up at for 20 odd years.

"So what, this a temper tantrum?" Dean finally says and Austin finally stops kicking and making those pathetic screams.

Bobby shrugs, "I don't know much about kids, but pretty sure he wants something."

Dean turns his attention to his bloody arm and goes for Bobby's first aid kit that is sitting in one of the drawers in the desk that Austin had repeatedly kicked at for several seconds. "And I'm pretty sure I want something too." He grabs one of the whiskey bottles in Bobby's room and dumps some alcohol onto the cut - no saying what the hell is in Austin's mouth, and then proceeds to wrap up the cut as he continues to watch the young kid lay on the ground.

He's just laying there now, sweaty and still shaky, but there's none of the previous anger that he displayed before, "kinda wish he could talk, so I knew what the hell he wants."

"You think it was your blood that's making him all shaky?"

It was a haze, he was about to bend down to get a good look at the kid under the table when Austin just becomes a blur and straight up attacks him. But he vaguely remembers the slick and wet feeling on his arm as Austin pinned him down, like he couldn't get a stable grip cause of sweaty palms, "no...I keep trying cooked food Bobby. After the rat and what he just did now, you have any raw meat?"

Bobby looks at Dean as if he just grew a second head, "you gonna feed an already sick boy some raw meat that could have salmonella poisoning?"

"He ate a damn rat! Pretty sure he's immune to that shit."

There's one thing Bobby knows he can do, is put the blanket back onto the partially naked boy just laying there on the floor, so he goes ahead and picks the blanket back up, "yeah, that's probably what this is. Food poisoning. From that rat." He drapes the blanket over Austin and turns back to Dean, "I'm going out to the store to get some vitamins for him cause that's what he needs. Not a steak cooked rare. Watch him."

He doesn't move, he doesn't know why but he just feels it's safer if he plays dead around these two, and eventually one of their footsteps trail outside of the door and eventually fade away. The other one however, he can just feel him still hovering around him.

Dean sighs and plops down on the chair that was previously overturned by Jungle Book over here, he just watches the kid under the blanket who hasn't even moved since Bobby placed it on him.

"So what? Don't like the rats from South Dakota? Texas rats better? They say everything is bigger in Texas, so a rat there must be like what? A Big Mac?"

There's no answer, obviously, and he looks around the room - bored, when he sees the rag that Bobby used to clean the blood off his face. There's blood all over Austin, his blood, and while he's not feeling all that motherly towards a guy who just cut into him and drank his blood, the least he can do is clean him off. It will occupy some of the time till Bobby comes back.

He grabs it, pours a water bottle onto it to get it nice and damp, and walks over to Austin and sits on the floor next to him.

The kid looks dead, his eyes are open but his breathing is so slow it looks like he's in a deep sleep. It's fucking creepy. And the blood splatter around his mouth didn't help either.

Dean slowly leans the towel to Austin's face and starts to rub the blood off, getting his face nice and clean. There's beads of sweat that linger on his skin, which is hot to the touch, even through the towel it feels hotter than any human flesh should be. So Dean sets the towel down and slowly places the back of his hand on the kid's sweaty forward, he hisses from the heat, like touching a hot plate that came out of the oven, and pulls his hand away quickly.

Austin can deal with the slower movement he's making, but the sudden movements scare him. He flinches as Dean pulls away, it's the only movement he's made since his little tantrum. 

There's something in the Short Hair's eyes, he's not sure what to recognize it as, but its different from how Short Hair usually stares at him. "I'll be right back," it says and then it's standing back up and leaving the room.

But he doesn't move, he can't, he's too exhausted and everything hurts. He wishes he had the energy to curl back up into a ball but it feels easier just not moving.

Short Hair is back before he even realizes it, as if he was never gone in the first place, there's something in his hand. He sits right next to him, in the same spot, and slowly moves the thing in his hand towards his face. It moves past his lips - and he doesn't fight it - and rests underneath his tongue. It's there for awhile, it tastes weird, like something that isn't edible and that he shouldn't try to eat it. So he let's it be until Short Hair takes it back out of his mouth and looks at it, "holy shit."

He takes out a black square and pokes at it before pressing it up to his ear, Austin watches him do all this cause he finds it better to focus on something else besides the pain he's in.

Short Hair makes noises into the black square, saying "Bobby? Yeah, it's Austin. I don't think this is because of the rat." There's a pause and he continues, "yeah, you think food poisoning cause fevers of over 120 degrees?"

"There's no way that kid would be alive past 107, check it again," he replies back, currently in the middle of Wal-Mart _again_ for the second time within 24 hours.

Dean presses his hand to his face, currently trying to mask how much he's freaking out, "I'll check it again but Bobby. You think this is why the demons wanted him? This some sort of supernatural-"

Bobby cuts him off, "Dean. If it is, we'll figure it out. But right now, I can't do shit in the freezer section of Wal-Mart, they don't exactly have self-help books for feral children raised by demons here. Recheck the temperature and I'll be right back, you got me? Don't do anything rash."

Dean hangs up on him without saying good bye, shakes the thermometer again and waits till it gets back to room temperature before sliding it back into Austin's mouth.

It's exactly 124 fahrenheit when he takes the thermometer back out of his mouth. He doesn't have to be a very educated guy to know that that is impossible for any human to survive. He peels the blanket away from Austin's body, it has already been soaked with sweat, and notices how weak Austin looks. But he's always looked weak. He's malnourished. He lived in filth his whole life. Cut away from humanity and living on rats and bugs, "How the hell are you alive?" Dean asks, genuinely curious as to how anyone could make it through that.

Austin looks at him at that, which Dean would have never thought twice about except now, there seems to be some sound recognition somewhere in that brain of his. But, Austin looks away from him again and stares up at the ceiling, his body still shaking and pouring with sweat.

He ends up putting bags of ice on Austin's body as he waits for Bobby to come back, they melt quickly, and all of the ice in Bobby's freezer is gone within minutes. It brings Austin's temperature down to 121 though, so that's something.

Bobby comes back almost thirty minutes since Dean called him, and just drops the bags of food and supplies on the ground and goes for the thermometer himself. He grabs an alcohol wipe from the first aid kit, wipes it down, and sticks it into his own mouth.

"You don't trust me Bobby?"

"I don't trust this thermometer," he replies back, his speech a bit slurred from the stick under his tongue. He pulls it out a minute later and reads it: "98.6 degrees."

Dean wipes one of Austin's sweaty locks of hair out of his face and replies back, "I told you. The thing works and he had a fever of 124."

"Had?"

Dean points to the bags of water laying next to him, "I used up all your ice, brought his fever down a bit."

Bobby's turn to sit down, he practically rushed out of Wal-Mart to get back to Dean and Austin without just dumping all the supplies they needed, "I got some food my mother used to make me when I was sick. I'll look up whatever this is and...you can't screw up tomato soup can you?"

He sits up, taking his cue to leave, and grabs the Wal-Mart bags, "come on Bobby, give me some credit here." Bobby smiles gently at that and Dean looks down at Austin laying on the floor. He curled up into himself, like a ball, sometime between the first bag of ice and the last, and actually moved closer Dean, pressing his head into the chilled coolness of the ice. It flutters inside him, how much he cares for the feral son of a bitch, even though he took a swipe at him with a blade and drank some of his blood, he can't help but feel protective of Austin. Dean wants to hate him, for everything that Austin pulled him away from - his father, the job, his 'normal' life that he has gotten used to, but there's something in his gut telling him that he needs Austin as much as Austin needs him.

Dean steps out of Bobby's study, hoping that Bobby has some rice somewhere in the kitchen so he can make Austin some Tomato Rice Soup. The sort that his mother made him when he got sick, because if there's one thing that Austin needs now more than ever is someone that cares for him as a parent would.


	6. Chapter 6

Turns out Austin is more willing to eat when he's sick, Dean notices as he takes another spoonful of the tomato rice soup and tips it into his mouth. Austin is sitting up now, in Bobby's bathtub full of cool water. He didn't fight Dean, which was odd, since the last time Austin was in a bathtub it didn't end up so pretty, but he supposes his body is so put out from the fever that he just can't.

He really doesn't want to eat, his tiny stomach is already in side splitting pain and really all he wants to do is lay down and sleep. But Short Hair is manhandling him around and he's just too weak to fight back, so he swallows the red liquid that isn't correct either, and he chews softly on the little bits of rice. Austin blearily looks up at Short Hair as he grabs another spoonful of the stuff and let's out a quiet sigh - barely audible, but in the quiet bathroom, Dean notices it. "You don't like it?"

He pulls the spoon away and hovers it over the bowl, he's sure he made it just like his mother did. And he puts the spoon into his mouth and tastes the soup himself. It tastes fine. Austin looks up at him, those hazel eyes trying to focus on the movement of Dean's mouth, figuring out a way to get this guy to stop feeding him and to just let him sleep. Maybe if he just...he slowly lays down in the water, the cool liquid splashing around as he tries to fit his 6 foot 4 frame into the tiny porcelain tub, but fails and he just ends up splashing around some more just trying to get comfortable.

"Okay, okay, I get that message," Dean sets the bowl of soup on the sink counter, stands up, and starts to lift the wet naked kid out of the tub. Not able to stand himself, Dean tries to keep him upright as he extends his arm out and grabs the towel right next to him. He leans against Dean, his feet trying to find purchase on the tile of the bathroom, but his balance slips and Austin falls down to the floor with a wet squeak. "Crap," Dean mutters, bending down to wrap him up in the towel and examining his already bruised up body for any more injuries. Dean lifts him up again, letting Austin lean against him as he moves a foot forward. Austin doesn't move his foot in synch with Dean and instead gets dragged out of the bathroom like a rag doll.

He sits Austin down on Bobby's bed, which is unmade and looks like bedding from the 1950s. It's more comfortable than the floor, or a sleeping bag, he figures, and well, Bobby gave them permission to be up in his room so Dean takes advantage of that. The feral kid practically flops backwards on to the bed as Dean let's him go, and Dean grabs a fresh diaper and slides it up Austin's legs easily. "See? So much easier when you don't fight me."

Austin says nothing.

There's a TV pointed right at Bobby's bed, an old and clunky thing, but he bets he still gets the basic channels. He turns it on, hoping for something good, but most of it is just static and noise, some local news stations, and a channel currently showing cartoons for the younger kids who don't go to school yet. The idea hits him as soon as he sees the stop motion rabbit talking in very basic words to its puppy dog friend.

He vaguely remembers watching shows like this when he was younger, when his mother was still around and served him some grilled cheese, cut into little triangles, cause it tasted better that way for some reason. Dean smiles, the memory of him watching the TV with a plate full of grilled cheese while his pregnant - he remembers her being pregnant - mother goes to talk to John.

She was killed before she had the baby, so the baby died along with her, and Dean can't help but remember that feeling of losing the chance to be a brother. A lot of things changed after Mary's death, his father had changed and the loss of brotherhood quickly took a backseat until the memory faded out altogether as the two men focused on the revenge of who ever killed his mother and the unborn baby. But with Austin here, the memories comes back.

The spare bedroom - that Dean had wanted as his own second bedroom - was turned into a nursery. Mary's relatives would bring by toys for the unborn baby, and would always bring something for Dean as well.

There was also Sesame Street and the learning books he'd get, A for Apple, and he'd color in an apple with a red crayon. He's not a teacher, far from it, but maybe if can help Austin out the way that Dean learned. At least, Dean can get him to recognize a dang apple and say the word.

He looks down, breaking away from his thoughts, and looks down at the kid rolled up into himself on the bed. Dean's not sure if he's just wet from the bath or if it's sweat, but the towel under him looks pretty soaked through now.

Stepping downstairs to grab another towel from Bobby's closet, he overhears the soft murmurs coming from Bobby's kitchen. "There isn't anything documented about humans with fevers over 110 and surviving, but there is one creature that I know can run a human up to high temperatures and I ain't so sure Dean is gonna like hearing that."

Bobby pauses as the other person on the line speaks, and Bobby replies, "he tested him. I tested him. Holy water and all. He's not a demon, but...I think he could be one of those kids you came across." Another pause of silence, "he's different though, Rufus. Those kids look normal, I mean hell, that one you found was in college, but this kid? He was locked up his entire life. Can't speak a damn word and he's scared shitless of everything."

Dean steps out now, quickly and swiftly pulling the phone from Bobby's hand. He hangs up on the Rufus fellow he was talking to, and flings the phone to the ground, "I told you I needed to keep this low key, Bobby. First you bring that cop over - and yeah - I know about her and now...who the fuck is Rufus?"

Bobby stands up, glaring up at Dean with anger, trying to counterbalance his lack of height with his gruff appearance, "Rufus is a friend and someone who knows what the hell Austin is - which is something supernatural - and don't give me that shit Dean. He's something."

"He ain't shit! He's, what? 15? And still shits himself cause he can't even walk to a toilet? Yeah, big fuckin' threat there!"

Bobby tries to calm down, try to bring sense between them, so he replies, "Dean, he's runnin' a fever that should have killed a normal person. Demons were hiding him away when the rest of the ones are up and running and creating havoc. Now, you probably don't wanna hear this but, there's something wrong with that kid and it ain't because he shits himself."

There's a loud thump that's echoes down from where Bobby's room is at, upstairs, and it breaks Bobby and Dean's attention from each other to whatever is going on with Austin.

The two are running up the stairs before they even knew it, and Bobby pushes the door to his bedroom open, expecting to see the kid with pitch black eyes and an evil grin - mirroring the way his possessed wife had looked at him all those years ago.

But Austin is no where to be seen, although there's a constant thumping noise coming from behind the bed, which Dean is already pulling around to investigate before Bobby even enters the room.

Slowly, he steps forward when he sees Dean pull of his belt and bend down towards Austin as he shouts back to Bobby, "turn the TV off!"

There's a children's program on the TV, bright colors and happy little puppets running around, and he doesn't quite put two and two together until he shuts it off and turns to sees Austin flailing on the floor - his eyes rolled back - and his rotted teeth clamping down on Dean's belt as he rides out a seizure.

Slowly, his movements begin to fade as his body ceases to shake and Austin is completely still and relaxed. Dean takes out the belt from Austin's mouth and stands back up, "can you go get the diaper bag? He needs a new one," is all Dean says as Bobby silently retrieves the diaper bag.

Dean is silent as he cleans Austin up and gets him into a new diaper, but eventually he speaks as he throws the used diaper into a bag and ties it up, "so what is it that Rufus thinks Austin is? Some sort of demon?"

"Half human, half demon."

Dean snorts, "yeah, really terrifying. I'll just go ahead and rename him Damien Thorn since he's the antichrist now."

"Dean, I ain't sayin' he's anything. I just can't pretend that demons had him captive for all those years if he's just a regular kid. And you shouldn't either, your dad taught you better than that."

Bobby looks over at Dean, expecting that sarcastic look on his face, but if anything he looked terrified, "I know there's something up with him, I ain't dumb enough to put my guard down. Little fucker knows how to use a knife." Dean's eyes soften, as he picks the skinny kid up and back onto Bobby's bed. He's not sure if the complete lack of shakes is a good or bad thing, but he's still sweating up a river.

"Then what if he wasn't supposed to get out? What if those demons had him in there for a reason?"

"And what reason is that?" Dean's tone grows bitter again.

Carefully, Bobby replies, "Those half-breed kids Rufus mentioned before, they have powers. The one Rufus came across had the ability to move objects with his mind, Dean. Austin is the only one we know of that was locked away, maybe he's too dangerous? Even for demons?"

"What are you saying, Bobby? That we let him die?"

"No, no, god no. But we're feeding a wounded dog, and we don't know if one day he'll bite the hand that feeds him or become man's best friend."

Dean shakes his head and let's out a pained and amused laugh, "I'll worry about _that_ the day he can say the word apple and knows what it means, how 'bout that?"

Bobby throws his hands up in the air and turns away out of his own bedroom, "fine. Fine. I'm going back downstairs to figure out what this kid is and you just...do what you do."

He doesn't want to leave Austin alone, not after the first time he left him alone for several hours and the kid got sick, and not even the second time when he just went down to grab some new towels and he ended up finding Austin on the floor having a damn seizure. It was like the world was telling him not to leave Austin alone, but god, he's fucking bored. Maybe if Austin could talk back, watching him wouldn't be so boring, but all he did was sleep off the stress of the seizure, unmoving on Bobby's bed.

There's a small bookcase in Bobby's room, not as big as the vast supernatural library he has in his study, but it's a decent collection of regular books that can be read just for the enjoyment of reading - not that Dean got a whole lot of enjoyment out of reading. He's read a couple books, particularly Vonnegut, and a couple Stephen King short stories - the guy got pretty damn wordy enough as it is in those - and he ended up grabbing a Stephen King novel from Bobby's bookshelf since that was the only author name that stuck out to him.

It was a novel, sadly, but he's seen the movie and liked it so he opens it and reads the first page out loud, not that Austin would understand him but mostly because he needed to fill the silence in the room with _something_.

He got to page 16 of The Shining when Austin started to stir awake. Dean placed the book down and moved forward, slowly and carefully, trying not to scare him, "you feeling better?"

Of course he doesn't get an answer, or even a shake or a nod of his head, but Austin sits up, maneuvering himself so he's on all four of his limbs and starts to crawl towards the edge of the bed. Dean gets up, about to touch him so the kid doesn't fall down, but he swings one of his long legs and slides off the bed, getting down to the floor without harming himself.

There's darkness underneath the bed, which Dean notices is what Austin wants, as the skinny kid slips underneath the bed and pulls himself under it.

Dean isn't sure if he's better nor not, Austin always looked sick to him, but if he's finally moving around by himself he counts that as a win. He peers underneath the bed, too dark to see much, but he can see Austin's body curled up into the ball that makes it look like his sides are still hurting him. 

He sighs, realizing how hard it is to get this kid to learn simple human things if he can't even get him to stick around in the light long enough. But, there is a wrong way and a right way to go about this, and he's pretty sure dragging the kid from out of his safe place is a huge fat wrong. Maybe if he can coax him out? With something he knows Austin wants?

He then remembers the dog bowl, how Austin crawled towards it and looked at it as if he was an eager dog about to be fed, so he quickly leaves the room and returns with the dog bowl and places it on the ground. Austin doesn't come out, so he scoots the dog bowl closer to the shadow of the bed and wiggles it around.

Dean hears the slide of skin against the floor and moves the dog bowl out of his reach until one of Austin's hands slides out and tries to grab it.

The dog bowl moves further and further away from his hand, then arm, and then finally Austin pops his head out from under the bed and stares at the dog bowl, and then up to Dean who is currently sliding it away from him.

Annoyed, Austin slaps his hand on the floor, trying to demand Dean to move it back towards him. But Dean only looks up to make eye contact and purposely moves it a bit further again.

Both arms are out of the bed, and he pulls himself out with what arm strength he has and starts to crawl towards the dog bowl. Dean grabs a can of tomato soup, opens up the lid and pours it into the bowl, which all Austin sees is red and before the last remaining soup is out of the can, Austin is shoving his face into the bowl and eagerly trying to drink it. It's silly looking, he can't lap it up like a dog and he has so sense to lift it and drink it that way, so he licks and sucks and honestly looks down right obscene - which Dean would've laughed at and made fun of since it sounds so sexual but with Austin - it just looks gross.

It tastes off, it's sweet like the blood They used to give him, but it's not right. It tastes amazing though, its the same stuff that Short Hair fed him before, but without the little grains of rice.There's still a shooting pain in his stomach, but it slowly resides as he takes in the fill of the soup, most of it splattering on his face and on the floor, but he manages to get a decent amount down.

Dean grabs a wet rag and wipes of Austin's face, getting rid of whatever didn't make it into his mouth, and smiles at him. "See? Human food tastes pretty good eh?"

Austin doesn't smile back, just continues to stare at Dean as his face gets wiped off with the rag, and as soon as Dean let's go of him, Austin quickly turns and shoots back under Bobby's bed.

He sighs, wishing that the kid would just stay out into the light long enough for his skin to gain _some_ color, but at least he knows how to coax Austin out for the next meal.

In the kitchen, he rinses out the dog bowl and looks at it. It's very similar to the one in Austin's former prison, and so dehumanizing. Dean imagines those demons that his father shot and killed with the colt had done it as a joke at first. Treating Austin like an abused pet, a caged animal, no better than a dog, and thought it would be funny to feed the kid with a damn dog bowl. As the last speck of tomato soup flows down into the garbage disposal, he drop the dog bowl into the sink and reaches for one of Bobby's regular bowls inside the cabinet.

He fills that bowl up with water, turns the faucet off, and balances the sloshing water in the bowl up the stairs.

Austin is still under the bed when he returns, he places the bowl of water on the ground and promptly leaves, letting Austin have his space and privacy and maybe he'll come out by himself for the water.

Dean slides down next to the closed door to Bobby's room, trying to listen for any movement. After about 5 minutes, there's the sound of Austin's hands and knees crawling across the floor and closer to the bowl of water.

Not wanting to open up the door and scare him back under neath the bed, he just closes his eyes and quietly rests his head against the wall. Dean doesn't hear Austin crawl back underneath the bed the entire time he is sitting against the wall, and mentally, he marks it down as a small, but still a very much needed win. 

 


	7. Chapter 7

Cops never came to investigate the gunshots that echoed through the abandoned warehouse, nobody outside of Dean and John and a couple of (now dead) demons heard the colt fire.

 

The bodies that the demons had rode in were now in the midst of decomposing, maggots and flies swarmed the bloated bodies. The smell of rotting flesh filling the air.

 

Not that the woman who walked passed the bodies cared, she’s seen worse. She stops in front of Sam’s room, facing her father’s back.

 

“Where were you?” She peers around her father, can only see the filth piled inside of the room and tense and angry stature her father carries.

 

Cautiously, she replies, “I heard the Winchesters where looking for the colt, I tried to find it before they did.” She looks down at the dead bodies and knows exactly what her father is going to say next.

 

He turns around, yellow eyes a stark contrast against his flesh, and he smiles, “well, mission accomplished, Meg, and I do mean that in the George Bush sense.”

 

She had left only for a few days, maybe a week, just to get the hell out of the damn warehouse she’s been occupying for the past 21 damn years. “Where’s Sam?”

 

Azazel snorts, “of all the people in the world, it was the Winchesters that got the colt and little Sammy. Fate’s a bitch, isn’t she?”

 

Meg knows her father well, well enough that the banter comes first and then the violence. Azazel raises his fist and Meg is flung against the wall - and damn, if she wasn’t as right as rain.

 

“I leave you with very simple orders, Meg. Very. Simple. What were those orders?”

 

She gasps, unable to talk as she tries to fight against her father’s invisible grip on her throat and body.

 

“I can’t hear you, speak louder.” 

 

He loosens his grip and she coughs out, “Watch over Sammy.”

 

Azazel smirks, but doesn’t loosen his grip, “Exactly. And what did you didn’t do?”

 

She grits her teeth and hisses out, “watch over Sammy.”

 

“Exactly! Your orders were to watch the damn kid, not run off chasing the Winchesters.” Azazel let’s her go, she falls to the floor, rubbing her neck.

 

“The outcome would’ve been the same, except I would’ve been dead and Sam would still be missing.”

 

Azazel glares at her, grabs her by her short hair and drags her to her feet, “I can arrange that, you useless sack of shit. But, I got a better punishment for you.”

Meg looks over at her father, still in his grip, “yes father?”

 

“Find the Winchesters. Bring Sammy back. Fail, and I’ll have you chained up where Lilith used to be held.”

 

She swallows, a pit in her stomach forms as fear takes over her, “yes father.”

 

After several moments, Azazel finally let’s her go, flinging her away from him as he disappears. She’s left in the abandoned warehouse, surrounded by decaying corpses, determined to find the Winchesters.

 

—

 

He’s never dreamt before. 

 

When he slept, his mind was blank and he was no longer with the world for however long his body needed to rest. 

 

Short Hair snaps him awake every time he tries to sleep when its bright out, it’s annoying. But once its dark, he leaves him alone to sleep himself. And finally, after being awoken about 14 times throughout the day, his tired eyes finally close.

 

He dreams of the man that took him from his safe place, not the younger one. But the older one,  the one who walked into the cell for the first time and changed his entire life. Austin isn’t sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, everything is different and everything changes. But the older man is no longer with Short Hair in this.

 

He’s walking towards another hotel room - one he’s never seen before - these places are always so different, Austin thinks.

 

The older man then opens the door, it’s dark inside. Austin can’t see inside, he needs light. Then, the older man flips the light switch and light fills the room. It’s better now, Austin thinks, light is good.

 

A woman, with short blonde hair, is sitting in one of the chairs. Austin has seen her before, she frequently would open the door to his safe place, cutting open her flesh and letting him drink the blood from her. She looks different now, black filling her eyes, as she faces the older man with a bemused expression, “hello John,” Austin doesn’t understand these words…but yet, he does now. They used to be just sounds to him, why is it so different now? Why - the door slams shut.

 

 _John_ stares at her wide eyed.

 

“Looking for this?” She hums and raises the colt up, showing if off, taunting John.

 

“How’d you find me?”

 

She stands up, looks around the hotel room, “one of your friends squeals like a little pig, John.”

 

He stares at her, jaw set, anger flooding his eyes, “who the hell are you? What do you want?”

 

“My name is Meg, and I’m looking for something you took from me,” Meg takes out a dirty and old polaroid picture, and shows John a picture of a young child, probably 4 or 5 years old. He’s filthy and horribly skinny, but not yet as filthy as Austin was when John found him. His eyes look uninterested, as if he can’t register what the person taking the photo was doing.

 

Austin can see the photo so well, even if he’s not actually in the hotel, it feels like he is standing there, right next to John. He wonders who the boy in the picture is.

 

“Is that? The boy? Is that what you want?”

 

She snorts, shoves the picture back into her pocket, “Not nice to steal another person’s pet, Johnny.”

 

“What is he to you?”

 

Meg’s eyebrows rise up, genuinely curious, “what is he to _you_?” Her fingers tap along John’s journal, “interesting diary. You keeping a filthy starving little boy for your own personal vendetta. Really, you look at me like you want to kill me but you had your chance to take him to the hospital, get all nice and better. But instead, you gave him to your son who would probably kill a goldfish within a day.”

 

John sneers, “it’s better than keeping him locked up in his own shit.”

 

“So, what are you gonna do with Sammy, huh? Try and get him to spill the beans on his captors? Not much of a talker though, is he?”

 

John’s facial expression falls, anger turning into surprise, “we named him Austin.”

 

“Yeah, I noticed. Not very creative naming him after a city, I mean why not name him after his mother’s grandfather?” She grins, enjoying John’s realization and horror.

 

He stands there, unsure of how to attack a demon now that he doesn’t have the colt, he stares her down, wanting to kill her with his bare hands, but there’s no getting out of that. So he does what he can do - and runs.

 

The door flies open and he sprints towards his car, taking out his cellphone as quick as he can. John climbs into his car, starts it quickly, and pulls away from the hotel. Meg just stares at it from the door of his hotel, smiling. The phone starts to dial out, “come on, come on…pick up-“

 

Loud ringing wakes him up. Austin sits up from his restless sleep, wide eyed and breathing heavily, his skin soaked with sweat. Still in pain from withdrawal and the…what was that. He looks around, he’s still in the same old room he was in. The phone next to Short Hair rings and vibrates, Austin goes over and stares at it.

 

Finally, Short Hair grumbles awake and picks it up right after it stops ringing. He just barely registers the ‘one missed call’ before throwing the phone onto the couch and sitting up.

 

Dean yawns, spreading his arms in a stretch, when suddenly Austin is climbing on top of him. He grabs the phone and flip it open, staring at the device as if he’s never seen a cell phone before. And well, he hasn’t.

 

“It’s called a phone,” he watches Austin press random buttons and he repeats the word, slower this time, “ _p-h-o-n-e_.”

 

Austin looks up at him, staring at the way his mouth moves, he’s making those noises. The noises the things at the safe place used to make. The noises they made to each other. The noises they made in his…whatever that thing was that happened to him during his sleep. He could understand them in his sleep, but now he can’t, and yet, god he wants to.

 

Dean slips the phone out of Austin’s hand and points to it, repeating, “ _p-h-o-n-e_ ”.

 

Austin stares at his mouth and then to the phone, no dammit. He doesn’t want Short Hair to point at it, he needs to put it to his ear like _John_ did. John needs Short Hair’s help. He grabs the phone out of Dean’s hand and puts it to his ear.

 

But instead of understanding, Dean just laughs, smiles at Austin putting the phone upside down on his ear. Dean figures at least he understand that the phone goes to the ear, even if he’s not using it 100% correctly. “Yeah, that’s how you use a phone. Kinda.” Stretching again, Dean stands up from the couch, leaving Austin alone with his cellphone. “I’m gonna go get us breakfast. Stay.”

 

Short Hair leaves the room, without talking back to John. He’s not sure how the device works but someone is there, he’s sure of it. And, desperate, a small voice squeaks out of him, “ohn”, trying to communicate with the man in his sleep.

 

—

 

Bobby is sitting at the desk now, a mug full of coffee next to him, Dean had woken him up with the smell of eggs and bacon. He’s flipping through several books, trying to find any information to help some hunter out - Dean isn’t sure who the hunter is and he doesn’t ask.

 

He’s too busy trying to get Austin to hold a fork, scoop up the yellow eggs, and put them into his mouth. 

 

Dean has his hand wrapped around Austin’s, keeping his grip tight around the fork so it won’t fall out of the kid’s unsteady hand. He moves the fork towards Austin’s mouth but the little shit won’t open his mouth, “come on Austin. Just,” Dean opens his mouth wide, closes it, opens it wide again, “just open your damn mouth.”

 

“Want me to pry his mouth open again?”

 

A few days ago they had both pried open Austin’s jaw, and past the decayed teeth there were relatively clean wisdom teeth in the back. Freshly sprung from the gums and not yet destroyed by years of a filthy lifestyle. So, Bobby had said, he’s around 20 years old. Hard to believe, the kid is stick thin and although he stands tall when they are able to get him to balance on his thin legs, he doesn’t look any older than 15.

 

Dean looks over at  Bobby, the fork full of eggs still hovering by Austin’s closed mouth. “Yeah, just so this fucker can eat something besides tomato soup for once.”

 

He stands up, closing one of the books shut, and walks over to where Dean and Austin are at. Carefully, Bobby opens up Austin’s mouth and Dean slides the fork inside. “Kay, close his mouth.”

 

Bobby does, and Dean moves Austin’s hand so that the fork slides out from his closed gums and the eggs stay inside. “Keep his mouth shut until he figures it out. Last time I was able to get the fork in there he just spat it back out.”

 

Austin stares at the two, the weird yellow fluffy thing still sitting in his mouth, and the guy’s hand holding his mouth closed. He wants to spit it out, its not edible, whatever the stuff is. Edible things are spiders or rats or bugs, juicy crunchy things that were once alive…not this, he starts chewing on it and the explosion of taste overwhelms him.

 

Okay, so maybe he was wrong about it not being edible. It’s not the food he’s used to eating, it’s so different, but it tastes _good_.

 

He finally swallows it and the younger man smiles, it’s big and wide, he’s not exactly sure what he means by baring his teeth, the woman in his dreams did that a lot to John. So Austin mimics Dean, hoping to get some sort of clue by what he means by the smile.

 

Dean makes a happy noise, smiles even bigger, when he sees Austin barring his teeth. These things are so weird, communicating by their faces, by noises, it was a lot simpler not having to do all this in his safe place.

 

In return for Austin’s efforts to smile back, he gets another fork full of eggs. Which, Bobby had to open his mouth again for the fork to go in, but he didn’t have to keep his hand on his jaw while Austin chewed.

 

Towards the end of the meal, Austin was grabbing Dean’s hand to help him guide his shaky hands towards his mouth, and he ate the rest of the eggs and bacon with hungry gusto.

 

—

 

Austin has gone through 3 coloring books before Dean was able to get him to use the coloring book for the right purpose. The 3 previous coloring books were torn apart, a little chewed on, and mostly just flung around Bobby’s study like confetti. 

 

He’s never had to clean up after himself or another person in his life, they were never in hotel rooms long enough to be orderly, but this was different. And irritating. He vacuums up the last bit of torn paper, opens the door, and Austin comes crawling back in after trying to get out of the room and away from the loud roaring monster that Dean slid all over the floor, the bits of paper disappearing.

 

It’s quiet now, Austin is currently filling in the entire page with random colors of crayons after Dean showed him - for what seemed like the 100th time - that things can be made out of the wax. It’s a coloring book of letters and numbers, not that Austin would understand them, and Dean really doesn’t have the first clue of teaching another human being how to freakin’ read. But, he supposes, at least the coloring book isn’t being torn apart now.

 

Dean sips on a much needed glass of whiskey, sitting on the couch and just relaxing as Austin scribbles away. It’s peaceful, but not boring. Austin kinda keeps Dean on his toes. Never sure if the little guy will find another rat and dig in or do something dangerous with a knife.

 

He sits up and looks down at Austin, where he’s currently laying on the floor. The way he holds the crayon is awkward, he uses his entire hand to grasp the little stick of wax instead of just a few fingers, and Austin uses way to much pressure to get the crayon going. But he can’t see what Austin is drawing, probably just a bunch of scribbles.

 

His phone still sits on the couch, flipped open from probably just being dropped by Austin, he picks it up and presses a button to turn the screen back on.

 

It’s the settings page, Austin must’ve clicked a few buttons and it just brought him there, and Dean closes out of the page and sees a little bubble - ‘one missed call’.

 

Oh yeah. The page is brought up and he reads that his father tried to call him earlier, “aw fuck.”

 

Austin looks over to him, but turns back to his coloring when he realizes Dean wasn’t talking to him.

 

There’s no voicemail, so maybe it wasn’t that urgent? Maybe he’s just wondering where Dean was, he never did call him back when he got to Bobby’s place. His father and Bobby weren’t on the best of terms and being sidetracked with Austin all the time just kind of put that on the back burner.

 

Sighing, Dean calls his father back, hoping he won’t get chewed out for not updating him on his and Austin’s whereabouts. It dials out for a few moments before it goes to John’s voicemail, “uhh, hey dad. I missed your phone call, you’re probably just wondering where me and Austin are. We’re at Bobby’s now, Austin is doing good. Call me back.” He hangs up, flips the phone closed and drops the phone down onto the couch.

 

Dean looks up from his glass of whiskey and sees that Austin is staring at him, the coloring book closed with a ton of crayons just laying around the kid.

 

Weird. Little guy is weird as hell. 

 

He stands up and walks towards Austin, “what have you been doodlin’, huh?” He sits down next to Austin, and slowly takes the coloring book. Austin let’s him.

 

Most of it are scratches of crayon wax, no real order to it. Nothing is colored within the lines, Dean was kinda expecting that. Still, it was some progress. He flips through the pages, the scratches become more and more…sensible, like Austin was slowly figuring out what he can do with the crayons.

 

Then, as he reached the last page, a poorly drawn woman with short blonde hair was scribbled into the page. As far as Dean can remember, Austin hasn’t been in contact with anyone outside of himself, his father, and Bobby. So, whoever this woman was, Dean realizes, it must have been one of the demons that kept him locked up. 

 

He stares at the drawing, the black circular eyes staring back at him. If it was some other kid’s drawing, he would’ve never thought twice about the black dots as eyes, but Austin wasn’t some other kid. This was a kid, with no outside contact to the world and was half-ass raised by demons, figuring out how to draw a human shape quicker than he thought was possible.

 

“Who is she?” Dean asks, pointing to the drawing, “who is she?”

 

Austin stares at him, he doesn’t understand what he’s saying. But he figures what he means by pointing to the drawing. Deep in concentration, he tries to figure out the sounds to copy what the demon had said her name was. Quietly, just above a whisper, his throat moves and a sound comes out, rough and still so unused, “ _meeaa_.” 

 

Dean’s eyes widen, “holy shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this doesn't feel to quick. I had to introduce some plot to get Sam's learning development going. Since a normal human at 22 years of no human contact, outside of some demons feeding him blood, would do a number on that person's mental development. So, nothing too sudden, just a supernatural push for Sam to realize that the noises humans make is just how they communicate.


End file.
